Who Is Man?

Abraham J. Heschel

Stanford University Press

R e lig io n ; P h ilo so p h y

Who Is Man ?
Abraham J. Heschel

"A veritable gem , reflecting so adm irably w ell the talents and
strengths o f H esch el's thou ght and style the p ow er o f pro
found insight and intriguing su ggestiveness and the talent for
the pithy, poetic phrase em bracing and sum m arizing w hole
w orld s o f intricate and com plex thought. . . . H eschel has given
us a w ealth and profu nd ity o f in sig h t." The Journal of Religion

"L earn ed , lucid , so condensed that m any o f the thoughts appear

as aphorism s, this stim ulating volu m e w ell defines a num ber o f
Ju d eo -C h ristian co n cep ts." The New York Times Book Review

"T h e b o o k . . . has an u n com plicated , easy-flow ing style and w ith

a subtle pow er stirs the reader to m editation on life's deepest
m ean in g ." Cithara

"T h ere is no sentence, no page w h ich does not draw from w ith
in u s the im pulse tow ard m eaning, tow ard the authentic life,
authentically lived." Los Angeles Times

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WhoiszMan?

A b rah am J. H esch el

Stanford University Press

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 Contents

To thin\ of man in human terms i

Do we live what we are? 4
Self-\nowledge is part of our being 6
The imphcations of being human 8
The self as a problem 11
Care for man 12
The logic of being human 15

11

Some definitions of man 18

Whatdo w esee\to kjiow? 20
The eclipse of humanity 25
What is being human? 27

ui

Preciousncss 33
Uniqueness 36
Opportumty 39
bionfinality 40
Process and events 42
Solitude and solidarity 44
Reciprocity 46
Sanctity 48
 IV

The dimension of meaning 50

The essence of being human 56
Being and meaning 67
Being and living 68
Who is mans meaning? 72
Meaning in quest of man 74
Meaning beyond the mystery 75
Transcendent meaning 77

v
Manipulation and appreciation 81
Disavowal of transcendence 83
Existence and expediency 85
The sense of the ineffable 87
Presence 89
Pathos 90

vi
H ow tolive 94
T o be is to obey 97
Continuity 98
The precariousness of being human 100
Being-challenged-in-the-world 103
Requiredness 106
lndebtedness 107
The experience of being as\ed 109
lam com m andedthereforelam m
Embarrassment 112
Celebration 114

vi
 Preface

The foliowing study comprises in expanded form the Ray-

mond Fred West Memorial Lectures at Stanford University,
delivered in May 1963.
Many important aspects of the problem of man have not
been discussed in this volume, while others have been dealt
with too briefly. But the volume will serve as prolegomena
to a more comprehensive study in which 1 have been engaged
for some time.
A.. J . H .

October 1965

Vil
 Chapter one

T o thin\ o f man in human terms

T o ask a question is an act of the intellect; to face a problem
is a situation involving the whole person. A question is the
result of thirst for knowledge; a problem reflects a State of
perplexity, or even distress. A question calls for an answer, a
problem calls for a solution (from the Latin solvere, to loosen,
to dissolve).
No genuine problem comes into being out of sheer inquisi-
tiveness. A problem is the outcome of a situation. It comes to
pass in moments of being in straits, of intellectual embarrass-
ment, in experiencing tension, conflict, contradiction.
T o understand the meaning of the problem and to appre-
ciate its urgency, we must keep alive in our reflection the situ
ation of stress and strain in which it comes to pass, genesis and
birth pangs, motivation, the face of perplexity, the varieties
of experiencing it, the necessity of confronting and being pre-
occupied with it.
T o clarify, to study, and to communicate a problem we must
put it into words, for without translating the moments of won-
dering into logical terms there would be no possibility of test-
ing the trans-subjective validity of what is thought in these

i
 moments, nor the possibility of its intersubjective communi-
cation.
Yet the act of verbalization extracts the problem from the
situation in which it arises. The question verbalized, however,
must not be equated with the problem confronting us. The
danger always exists of those moments becoming distorted
and even lost in the process of translation from situation to
conceptualization. Too often speculation becomes analysis-by-
long-distance of sounds transmitted over a poor connection.
W e formulate and debate the issues while oblivious to, and
alienated from, the experiences or the insights which account
for our raising the issues.
The predicament of much of contemporary philosophy is
partly due to the fact that ongoing conceptualizations have so
far outdistanced the situations which engender philosophizing
that their conclusions seem to be unrelated to the original
problems. After all, philosophy was made for man rather than
man for philosophy.
A question is due to knowing too little, to a desire to know
m ore; a problem is often due to knowing too much, to a con-
flict between opposing claims of knowledge. A question is
the product of curiosity, a problem reflects an embarrassment
of knowledge.
The impulse to reflect about the humanity of man comes
from the conscience as well as from intellectual curiosity. It
is motivated by anxiety, and not simply by a desire to add to
the sum of information about a member of the class of mam-
mals.
W e are concerned with the problem of man because he is
a being afflicted with contradictions and perplexities, because
he is not completely a part of his environment. A good horse,

2
properly cared for, lives as a part of his habitat and is unen-
cumbered by problems. In sharp contrast, man is a problem
intrinsically and under all circumstances. T o be human is to
be a problem, and the problem expresses itself in anguish, in
the mental suffering of man. Every human being has at least
a vague notion, image, or dream of what humanity ought to
be, of how human nature ought to act. The problem of man
is occasioned by our coming upon a conflict or contradiction
between existence and expectation, between what man is and
what is expected of him. It is in anguish that man becomes
a problem to himself. W hat he has long disregarded suddenly
erupts in painful awareness.
In our reflection we shall consider what man means to him
self as well as what man means to his fellow man. The ani-
mality of man we can grasp with a fair degree of clarity. The
perplexity begins when we attempt to make clear what is
meant by the humanity of man.
W hat we aim at is not an analysis of a word as a semantic
problem, but rather the investigation of a reality or a situation.
Being human is not just a phrase referring to a concept with-
in the mind, but a situation, a set of conditions, sensibilities,
or prerequisites of m ans special mode of being.
W e can attain adequate understanding of man only if we
think of man in human terms, more humano, and abstain
from employing categories developed in the investigation of
lower forms of life. The struggle for survival, for example, is
not the same for human beings as it is for animais.
Sir Arthur Keith, a strong Darwinian, told his Aberdeen
students in 1931: Nature keeps her human orchard healthy
by pruning. W ar is her pruning hook.* According to a Ger-
* New York Tim es, January 8, 1955, obituary page.

3
man general, W ar is a biological necessity of the first impor-
tance, a regulative element in the life of mankind which can-
not be dispensed with___ But it is not only a biological law
but a moral obligation and, as such, an indispensable factor
in civilization.* God will see to it, says Treitschke, that
war always occurs as a drastic medicine for the human race.
W e are concerned with the totality of mans existence, not
only or primarily with some of its aspects. Vast scientific
efforts are devoted to the exploration of various aspects of
human lifefor example, anthropology, economics, linguis-
tics, medicine, physiology, political Science, psychology, soci-
ology. Yet any specialized study of man treating each func-
tion and drive in isolation tends to look upon the totality of
the person from the point of view of a particular function or
drive. Such procedures have, indeed, resulted in an increasing
atomization of our knowledge of man, in the fragmentation
of the personality, in metonymical misunderstandings, in mis-
taking the part for the whole. Is it possible to comprehend one
impulse separately, disregarding the interdependence of all
impulses within the wholeness of the person ?

Do we live what we are?

W hat is it that we seek to know ? W hat does the knowledge
of man aim at? W hat knowledge or object of knowledge do
we question when we raise the question about him ? W hat
does the question about man liope to accomplish P
Man is not a tabula rasa. Unlike other objects, the desire to
know himself is part of his being. T o know himself he must

* Friedrich von Bernhardi, Germany and the Next War (New York,
1914), ch. 1.
lb id .,p . 17.

4
first question himself, and that means questioning his self-
knowing, disturbing what may be a narcissistic relationship
of the self to its conceits, ingrown thinking. T o raise such
questions is more than to seek an approach to an answer; it
is a breakthrough.
T h e task of a philosophy of man cannot be properly defined
as a description of the nature of human being. It is critique as
well as description, disclosure of possibilities as well as expo-
sition of actualities of human being. The trend of our think
ing leads us not only to form questions about human being
but also to question human being. W e question what we are
in the light of an intuitive expectation or a vision of what man
ought to be.
Something is meant by human being which involves more
than just being; something is at stake in human being which
is obscured, suppressed, disregarded, or distorted. How to pen-
etrate the shell of his adjustments and to inquire whether ad-
justment is his ultimate vocation ? W e study human behavior;
we must not disregard human bewilderment. W e analyze
expression; we must not disregard the inability to express
what we sense. W e know more about mans possessions than
about his moods. W e describe deeds; we must not fail to ex
plore how one relates inwardly to what one does.
Do we live what we are or do we live what we have, or by
what we have ? Our difficulty is that we know so little about
the humanity of man. W e know what he makes, but we do
not know what he is. In the characterizations of man, for ex-
ample, as a tool-making or thinking animal, reference is made
to the functions, not to the being, of man. Is it not conceivable
that our entire civilization is built upon a misinterpretation of
man ? Or that the tragedy of modern man is due to the fact

5
that he is a being who forgot the question: W ho is man ? The
failure to identify himself, to know what is authentic human
existence, leads him to assume a false identity, to pretend to
be what he is unable to be or to fail to accept what is at the
very root of his being. Ignorance about man is not lack of
knowledge but false knowledge.

Self-knowledge is part of our being

Man is not free to choose whether or not he wants to attain
knowledge about himself. He necessarily and under all cir-
cumstances possesses a degree of such knowledge, preconcep-
tions, and standards of self-interpretation. The paradox is that
man is an obscure text to himself. He knows that something
is meant by what he is, by what he does, but he remains per-
plexed when called upon to interpret his own being. It is not
enough to read the syllables of a text written in a language
which one does not understand, to observe and to recount
mans externai behavior, important and necessary as such an
enterprise is. Man must also interpret them in terms larger
than his inner life.
W hat is the right method of exegesis of human existence ?
The philosophers primary task is not merely to describe
and to judge the modes and facts of m ans actual behavior, but
also to examine and to understand the meaning of describing
and judging the modes and facts of his behavior. W e obvi-
ously judge the behavior of man by standards which we do not
apply to the hippopotamus. Is it not possible that our standards
are unfair ? Is it not conceivable that we expect too much or
too little of man ? Man was, is, and will always remain a beast,
and nothing beastly is alien to him. And yet such an epigram,
though rationally plausible, is intuitively repulsive. Is that re-

6
pulsiveness intrinsic to our existence as human being? O r is
our acceptance of nonbeastly standards a stratagem designcd
to protect our beastly instincts P
In asking about man we ask of man what he knows about
himself as a human being. This self-knowledge is part of his
being. Thus, knowing oneself and being a self are not to be
kept apart.
Like all concrete beings, man occupies a place in physical
space. However, unlike other beings, his authentic existence
goes on in an inner space. Geography determines his phys
ical position; his thoughts are his personal position. T h e
thought we think is where we are, partly or entirely. T h e
thought we think is the space of the inner life, comprehend-
ing it. A person is in his thoughts, particularly in the way in
which he knows or understands his own self. His thoughts
are his situation. His nature includes what he thinks he is.
Unlike a theory of things which seeks merely to know its
subject, a theory of man shapes and affects its subject. State-
ments about man magnetize the inner space of man. W e not
only describe the nature of man, we fashion it. W e become
what we think of ourselves.
W e use the term nature in contrast to culture, natural in
contrast to artificial, to denote that which has not been
changed and affected by human action, free from calculations
and conscious design, completely artless, abiding in the State
in which it has come into being. In this sense the natural
man is a myth and a contradiction in terms, because man has
become man by acts of culture, by changing his natural State.
Human nature in its pristine, uncorrupted State is not given
to us. Man as we encounter him is already stamped by an
image, an artifact. Human being in distinction from all other

7
beings is endowed with consciousness of its own being, not
only with awareness of the presence of other beings. Con-
sciousness-of implies awareness of ones special position in re-
lation to other beings. Any conception as to what I am going
to do with myself presupposes my having an image of myself.
It is questionable whether mans nature can be treated as a
substance in isolation. Behavior is determined not only by
processes inside such a substance, but also by forces and stan-
dards that prevail in society, by heterogeneous pressures from
the outside. W hat is given is a complexity. T h e decisions,
norms, preferences affecting both action and motivation are
not simply part of human nature; they are determined by the
image of man we are committed to, by the ultimate context
to which we seek to relate ourselves. Man is endowed with an
amazing degree of receptivity, conformity, and gullibility. He
is never finished, never immutable. Humanity is not some-
thing he comes upon in the recesses of the self. He always
looks for a model or an example to follow. W hat determines
ones being human is the image one adopts.
Thus the truth of a theory about man is either Creative or
irrelevant, but never merely descriptive. A theory about the
stars never becomes a part of the being of the stars. A theory
about man enters his consciousness, determines his self-under-
standing, and modifies his very existence. The image of man
affects the nature of man. Any attempt to derive an image
from human nature can only result in extracting an image
originally injected in it.

The implications of being human

There is no substitute for the work done by the various Sci
ences dealing with man. Yet there is an urgent need for an

8
approach seeking to identify what is unique about the hu-
manity of man, a task beyond the scope of the Sciences men-
tioned above.
Behavioral Sciences have enriched our knowledge of psy-
chological, biological, and sociological facts and patterns of
behavior by observation and description. However, we must
not forget that in contrast to animais man is a being who not
only behaves but also reflects about how he behaves. Sensi-
tivity to ones own behavior, the ability to question it, to re-
gard it as a problem rather than as a structure consisting ex-
clusively of irreducible, immutable, and ultimate facts, is an
essential quality of being human. The fact that to the mind
of man his behavior is a problem instead of an unquestioned
immutable fact is as important a datum of inner activity as
the facts of externai behavior.
Empirical intemperance, the desire to be exact, to attend to
hard facts which are subject to measurement, may defeat
its own end. It makes us blind to the fact behind the facts
that what makes a human being human is not just mechani-
cal, biological, and psychological functioning, but the ability
to make decisions constantly. Facts exhibited in life, cut off
from antecedent decisions and determinations, from simulta-
neous attitudes as well as from subsequent reactions and re-
flections, cannot be exactly described.
It is an intellectually stifling assumption to regard a be
havior pattern as a matter of fact pure and simple, just be-
cause it can submit itself to exact methods of inquiry. Is it not
a fallacy to regard a behavior pattern as if it were a ghost city,
an agglomeration of buildings with no living soul dwelling
therein ? A human behavior pattern is not a monument to a
life that is gone, but a drama full of life. It is a system as well

9
as a groping, a wavering, a striking forth; solidity as well as
outburst, deviation, inconsistency; not a final order but a pro-
cess, conditioned, manipulated, questioned, challenged, and
guided by a variety of factors.
The more refined and accessible the avenues to the study
of behavioral facts become, the greater the scarcity of intellec-
tual audacity in probing what is imponderable about human
being.
Our understanding of man is dangerously incomplete if we
dwell exclusively on the facts of human being and disregard
what is at stake in human being. T h e facts, mans actual be-
havior, are explicit; what is at stake is implied. Since behavior
patterns may be easily observed and described with a degree
of statistical precision, we are inclined to reduce all of man to
what is explicit, manifest, observable.
It is a mistake, however, to equate mans essence with his
manifestations. T h e power and secret of his being reside as
much in the unsaid and unproclaimed, in the tacit and inef-
fable, in the acts of awareness that defy expression as in the
vessels man creates for his expression.
Physical things can be defined in terms of objective prop-
erties; man can be understood only in terms of his total situ-
ation, in terms of the demands he is called upon to answer.
T h e chief problem of man is not his nature, but what he does
with his nature.
Human being, therefore, must not be reduced to human na
ture. Human being is a fact as well as a desideratum, a given
constellation as well as an opportunity. It can be understood
only in relation to a challenge. It includes both the process
and the structure of the facts of his being as well as the sur-
prise and the events that come to pass in his existence.

io
T he self as a problem
Our intention, therefore, is not to engage in a purely descrip-
tive exploration of the total scope and pattern of human be-
havior, but to ascertain ends and directions, asking questions
and raising issues which are implied in description. The task
of our inquiry is to explore modes of being which character-
ize the uniqueness of being human. W hat constitutes human
existence ? W hat situations and sensibilities belong necessarily
to the make-up of being human P
Man is never neutral or indifferent in relation to his own self.
Love and knowledge, value judgment and factual description
cannot be kept apart in establishing self-knowledge. Self-
knowledge embodies either acceptance or rejection. Ones re-
lationship to the self is inconceivable without the possession
of certain standards or preferences of value.
The notion of the strict contrast between descriptive and
normative, analysis and evaluation, observation and interpre-
tation, loses its relevance in the process of man seeking to es-
tablish his being human.
Facts of personal existence are not merely given. They are
given through self-comprehension, and self-comprehension is
an interpretation, since every act of self-comprehension in
volves the application of value judgments, norms, and deci-
sions, and is the result of a selective attentiveness, reflecting
a particular perspective. Thus even the facts of my existence
are disclosed to me by way of interpretation, the terms of
which determine the mode of my living and self-understand-
ing.
Self-understanding can hardly be kept strictly within the
limits of description of facts, since the self itself is a compound
of facts and norms, of what is as well as of a consciousness of
XI
what ought to be. The essence of being human is value, value
involved in human being.
As said above, the problem of man is occasioned by our
coming upon a conflict or contradiction between existence and
cxpectation. Thus the root of self-understanding is in the
awareness of the self as a problem; it operates as criticai re-
flection. Displacement of complacency, questioning the self,
its acts and traits, is the primary motivation of self-under-
standing.
Self-understanding is entirely dependent upon self-judg-
ment, and must not be equated with observation or self-ob-
servation. Mere description, simple dogmatic acceptance of the
self, amounts to the deproblematizing of the man and is really
the cessation of self-understanding. In short, if being human
continues to be a problem, we must realize that the method
of description, used exclusively, can at best ofer us self-ob-
servation but is incapable of dealing with the problem.

Care for man

Wondering is a mode of human being. But wondering may
just be sheer wandering, moving aimlessly, roaming, ram-
bling. Channeling our wondering into the form of a question
is the imposition of a pattern and a procedure upon the mind.
There is more than one question that can be asked. The
choice of question determines the trend of the inquiry. In
other words, each question is a preconceived pattern, and there
is more than one pattern. A pattern orders the inchoate won
dering and determines in advance the process of thinking
about its theme.
T o know that a question is an answer in disguise is a mini-

12
mum of wisdom. This is the thought that comes to all men,
to every man in the form of question: W hat am I here for?
W hat is at stake in my existence ? This question is not de-
rived from premises. It is given with existence. Man, a prob-
lem to himself, does not take his existence for granted.
W e must always start from the beginning. The most vital
problems cannot be settled vicariously. No solution is estab-
lished once and for all. W e must all ponder the same question
and wonder at the same puzzle. Just as I had to go through
childhood, adolescence, and maturity, so must I go through
the crises, embarrassments, heartaches, and wrestlings with
this basic issue.
In asking the question about man, I have in mind not only
a question about the essence but also a question about the con-
crete situation in which we find ourselves, a situation that
puts the problem of man in a new light. The issue is old, yet
the perspective is one of emergency. New in this age is an un-
paralleled awareness of the terrifying seriousness of the hu-
man situation. Questions we seriously ask today would have
seemed utterly absurd twenty years ago, such as, for example:
Are we the last generation ? Is this the very last hour for West
ern civilization ?
Philosophy cannot be the same after Auschwitz and Hiro-
shima. Certain assumptions about humanity have proved to
be specious, have been smashed. W hat has long been regarded
as commonplace has proved to be utopianism.
Philosophy, to be relevant, must offer us a wisdom to live
byrelevant not only in the isolation of our study rooms but
also in moments of facing staggering cruelty and the threat
of disaster. The question of man must be pondered not only

i3
in the halls of learning but also in the presence of inmates in
extermination camps, and in the sight of the mushroom of a
nuclear explosion.
W hat is happening in the life of man, and how are we to
grasp it? W e ask in order to know how to live.
T h e nature of our inquiry stands in marked contrast to
other inquiries. Other issues we explore out of curiosity; the
issue of man we explore out of personal involvement. In other
issues inquirer and theme are apart: I know the Rocky Moun-
tains, but I am not the Rocky Mountains. Yet in regard to
knowledge of myself I am what I seek to know; being and
knowing, subject and object, are one. W e have seen that we
cannot reflect about the humanity of man and retain a relation-
ship of complete detachment, since all understanding of man
is derived from self-understanding, and one can never remain
aloof from ones own self.
T h e most valuable insights into the human situation have
been gained not through patient introspection or systematic
scrutiny, but rather through surprise and shock of dramatic
failures. Indeed, it is usually in the wake of frustration, in
moments of crisis and self-disillusionment, and rarely out of
astonishment at mans glorious achievements, that radical re-
flection comes to pass.
This is an age in which it is impossible to think about the
human situation without shame, anguish, and disgust, in
which it is impossible to experience enjoyment without grief
and unending heartache, to observe personal triumphs with
out pangs of embarrassment.
W hy do we ask the question about man? Because the
knowledge about man which we had accepted as self-evident
has proved to be a mass of bubbles bursting at the slightest

14
increase in temperature. Some of us live in dismay caused by
what man has revealed about himself.
T h e sickness of our age is the failure of conscience rather
than the failure of nerve. Our conscience is not the same. Stul-
tified by its own bankruptcy, staggered by the immense com-
plexity of the challenge, it becomes subject to automation.
Pride in our immediate past would be callousness, just as op-
timism about the immediate future would be stupidity. In the
period of Enlightenment a major concern of philosophy was
to emancipate man from the clutches of the past. Today our
concern seems to be to protect ourselves against the abyss of
the future.
One cannot study the condition of man without being
touched by the plight of man. Though biologically intact,
man is essentially afflicted with a sense of helplessness, dis-
content, inferiority, fear. Outwardly Homo sapiens may pre-
tend to be satisfied and strong; inwardly he is poor, needy,
vulnerable, always on the verge of misery, prone to suffer
mentally and physically. Scratch his skin and you come upon
bereavement, affliction, uncertainty, fear, and pain. Disparity
between his appearance and reality is a condition of social in-
tegration. Suppressions are the price he pays for being accept-
ed in society. Adjustment involves assenting to odd auspices,
concessions of conscience, inevitable hypocrisies. It is, indeed,
often a life of quiet desperation.

The logic of being human

T h e aim is an inquiry into the logic of being human. W hat
is meant by being human ? W hat are the grounds on which
to justify human beings claim to being human? Is the hu-
manity of man an incontestable insight, a basic assumption of

15
man, as intrinsic to human being as the ability to count or the
capacity to walk on two legs? Or is it a whimsical dream, a
changing, contingent, and accidental State of mind to be ex-
plained psychologically as derivative? In other words, does
being human belong to human nature as a necessity of be
ing or is it an epiphenomenon, a superimposed veneer easily
rubbed off ?
W e stand surprised at what is disclosed in our experience of
humanity. Being human is a reality. Mans being human is
constituted by his essential sensibilities, by his modes of re
sponse to the realities he is aware ofto the being that I am,
to the beings that surround me, to the being that transcends
me or, more specifically, by how he relates to the existence
that he is, to the existence of his fellow men, to what is given
in his immediate surroundings, to that which is but is not im-
mediately given.
In his facticity mans notions of being human are both
vague and confused; they are more frequently reflected in
moods than in decisions. Are these notions, then, devoid of
ontological validity ? People continue to consume food long
before they are aware of the necessity of nutrition. Yet it
would be misleading to regard the consumption of food as a
mere psychological need. The liquidation of being human
would inevitably lead to the liquidation of hujnan being.
There is the ontological connective between human being and
being human. Awareness, for example, of lifes significance
is not just a psychological need, it is part of mans being hu
man.
Being human and human being are interdependent, and
the components of the former are inherently related to the
facts and the drives of the latter. W hat am I aware of when

16
I think of the existence that I am ? W hat do I sense about my
cxistence as being human?
Being human, I repeat, is inherent as a desideratum in hu
man being. It is not given explicitly but is interpreted by ex-
perience.
Our inquiry must begin with an analysis of the content of
this awareness. Is there a pattern to be found in mans under-
standing of this basic insight ? W hat do we mean when we say
being human ? D o we face changing meanings of perma-
nent insights or permanent meanings of changing insights ?
Can we agree at least in rejecting alternatives to certain mean
ings we cherish ? Can we agree on a notion of what contra-
dicts being human? W e assume that the term human re-
tains some sameness of meaning when used repeatedly on dif-
ferent occasions. Are there any permanent, necessary, or con-
stitutive features of the desideratum ? How shall we articulate
exactly what is sensed by us vaguely ?

*7
 Chapter two

Some definitions of man

W hom do I mean when I ask about man ? I mean myself
as well as other selves. T h e subject I ask about is exceedingly
close to me. I not only perceive it; I am it as well as represent-
ing it. T o know others I must know myself, just as under-
standing others is a necessary prerequisite for understanding
myself.
The maxim Know thyself which was inscribed at the gate
of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi referred to self-knowledge
in relation to the gods: Know that you are human and noth-
ing morea warning against presumption ( hybris) , and a
call to the Apollonic virtue of temperance ( sophrosyne ).* It
was Scrates who isolated the nature of man as a problem in
itself, regardless of his relation to the gods, and employed the
maxim Know thyself in the sense of self-examhation3 Man
must interrogate his own nature; through self-kpowledge men

* See Charmides 164; Martin Nilsson, Gree\ Piety (Oxford, 1948), pp.
47f; also A. Altmann, The Delphic Maxim in Medieval Islam and Juda-
ism, in Biblical and Other Studies, ed. A. Altmann (Cambridge, Mass.,
1963). PP- i 83ff.
Phaedrus 230. It is also ascribed to Thales: Diogenes Laertius Thales,

section 40.

18
meet with countless blessings,and through ignorancc of them-
selves with many evils.*
Regarded by Plato as the very essence of knowledge, Know
thyself was later characterized as a brief saying, and yet a
task so great that Zeus himself alone could master it.$ There
is no issue about which so many contradictory statements have
been made, no issue so important, no issue so obscure. Psy-
chology, biology, sociology have sought to explore the nature
of man. And yet man remains an enigma.
This failure, standing in such marked contrast to the ad-
vancement of our knowledge about other matters, is itself a
major problem. W hy is man elusive in spite of his being the
most self-expressive entity known to us ?
The right knowledge of man is a prerequisite for the right
understanding f m ans knowledge about the world. A ll de-
cisions, cognitive, moral, aesthetic, are determined by the con-
ception of our own selves.
Protagoras maintained: Man is the measure of all things.H
This naturalist principie has been shattered more than ever
in our own age by the question: W hat is the measure of man?
Postmodern man is more deeply perplexed about the nature
of man than were his ancestors.
In efforts to comprehend the nature of man, numerous defi-
nitions have been suggested which have enhanced our realistic
understanding and illumined many aspects of mans nature

* Xenophon Memorabilia IV, 2, 24.

According to Menander, the saying Know thyself is not well said.
It were more practical to say, Know other folks. See Menander, The
Principal Fragments, ed. Francs G. Allinson (New York, 1930), p. 361
(Thrasyleon).
HDiogenes Laertius Protagoras, book 9, section 51.

19
and condition. And yet they fali short of helping us in our
situation today when ultimate problems have become our im-
mediate problems.
W hat is man? A worm crawling on a pebble, the earth;
a speck of life floating aimlessly through the immeasurable
vastness of the universe.
In the final analysis, mans soul is no more than his heat-
producing metabolism and warm blood, lung respiration and
breath, his inordinately large brain and questing mind, the
creativity of his hands, his memory, dreams, and volition, his
familial social organization, conscience, and culture.*
W e know that man is more similar to an ape than an ape is
to a toad. It may be that man has not only developed from
the realm of animais; he was, is, and shall always remain an
animal. But is this the whole truth about m an?
Indeed, man is a thing of space, biologically a type of mara-
mal, and the definitions cited above expose aspects of the fac-
ticity of his being. However, when pretending to express what
is decisive or central about man, these definitions seem to de-
pict an effigy rather than an image of man. W e are ready to
accept as adequate the definition of a dog as a carnivorous
domesticated mammal and of a fish as of the class of verte-
brate animais living exclusively in water. But are we ready to
accept the defintion of a human being as an individual of the
highest type of mammal existing or known to h^ve-existed ?

What do we see\ to know?

These definitions betray a deep inclination to conceive man
as a being made in the image of the animal. There undoubt-
edly is a conscious desire in man to be animal, natural in
* Weston La Barre, T h e Human Animal (Chicago, 1954), p. 295.

20
the experience of carnality, or even to identify himself as
animal in destiny and essence. It is, however, questionable
whether this desire may serve as a key in solving the riddle
of human being. Is it to be regarded as evidence of mans be-
ing an animal at heart or as a desire to experience what he is
not?
Since Aristotle it has been the generally accepted procedure
to define man as a unit in the animal kingdom. Man was de-
fined by Aristotle as by nature a civilized animal, and an
animal capable of acquiring knowledge, as an animal that
walks on two feet, as a political animal, as the only animal that
has the power of choice, as the most imitative animal.* Scho-
lastic philosophy accepted the definition of man as an animal
rationale, and Benjamin Franklin defined him as Homo faber,
a tool-making animal.
This tendencyso widespread in anthropological reflection
to comprehend man in comparison with the animal, from
the perspective of what we know about the animal, is bound
to yield answers which are unrelated to our question. T o be
sure, anatomy and physiology display innumerable points of
resemblance between man and animal. Yet, for all the simi-
larity in composition and functions, the contrasts are even
more remarkable. In asking the question about man our prob-
lem is not the undeniable fact of his animality but the enigma
of what he does, because and in spite of, with and apart from,
his animality. The question about man is not provoked by
what we have in common with the animal kingdom, nor is it
a function derived from what is animal in man.

* Tpica I28b 17, 132 8; Tpica 13o6 8, 132 20, 133 2 1, 134 15, 140 36;
Tpica i33b 8, I36b 20, i40b 33; Politiza 1253 1; Ethica Eudem ia i22b 22;
Potica i448b 8.

21
 In establishing a definition of man I am defining myself.
Its first test must be its acceptability to myself. Do I recognize
myself in any of these definitions ? Am I ready to identify my
self as an animal with a particular adjective?
In order to understand the validity of an answer, it is neces-
sary, as said above, to comprehend the precise and full mean-
ing of the problem, the situation of stress and strain in which
it comes to pass, and the necessity of coming to grips with it.
Otherwise, we are likely to accept answers that are irrelevant
to the questions.
Man in search of self-understanding is not motivated by a
desire to classify himself zoologicaliy or to find his place with-
in the animal kingdom. His search, his being puzzled at him
self is above all an act of disassociation and disengagement
from sheer being, animal or otherwise. The search for self-
understanding is a search for authenticity of essence, a search
for genuineness not to be found in anonymity, commonness,
and unremitting connaturality. Thus any doctrine that de-
scribes man as an animal with a distinguishing attribute tends
to obscure the problem which we seek to understand. Man is
a peculiar being trying to understand his uniqueness. W hat
he seeks to understand is not his animality but his humanity.
He is not in search of his origin, he is in search of his destiny.
The way man has come to be what he is illumines neither his
immediate situation nor his ultimate destination. The gulf
between the human and the nonhuman can be grasped only
in human terms. Even the derivation of the human from the
nonhuman is a human problem. Thus, pointing to the origin
of man throws us back to the question: W hat do we mean by
man, whose origin we try to explore ?
The hippopotamus may well regard man, with his physical

22 S'

weakness, emotional unpredictability, and mental confusion,
as a freak, as an unhappy and perverse sort of animal. How-
ever, in asking about the status of man we obviously take the
perspective and standards of man. W hat do these standards
disclose about the inncr being of man?
Is it not possiblc that, in following the example of Aristotle
and contemplating man in terms of the animal species, we
have been looking at man from the wrong perspective ? The
sense in which the term animal is used in defining the
whole man is far from being clear and exact. Do we really
know the inner life of the animais? Is it possible for us to
sense pure animality, unmixed with humanity? Is the ani-
mality of a human being the same as the animality of an ani
m al? Would it be valid to define an ape as a human being
without the faculty of reason and the skill of making tools ?
It is reported that after Plato had defined man to be a two-
legged animal without feathcrs, Diogenes plucked a cock and
brought it into the Academy. The zoomorphic conception of
man enables us to assign his place in the physical universe,
yet it fails to account for the infinite dissimilarity between
man and the highest animal below him. Zoomorphic concep-
tions of man are as proper as anthropomorphic conceptions
of God. In addition to its descriptive inadequacy, the sugges-
tive and cvocative mcaning of the word animal in the term
thinking animal distorts as much as it clarifies.
Every generation has a definition of man it deserves. But it
seems to me that we of this generation have fared worse than
we deserve. Accepting a definition is mans way of identifying
himself, holding up a mirror in which to scan his own face.
It is characteristic of the inner situation of contemporary man
that the plausible way to identify himself is to see himself in

23
the image of a machine. The human machine is today a
more acceptable description of man than the human animal.
Man is simply a machine into which we put what we call
food and produce what we call thought. A human being is
an ingenious assembly of portable plumbing. T h e defini-
tion itself goes back to the eighteenth century.* Never before,
however, has it been so widely accepted as plausible. A n ani
mal stands before us as a mystery; a machine is an invention.
W e must not take lightly mans pronouncements about
himself. They surely reveal as well as affect his basic attitudes.
Is it not right to say that we often treat man as if he were made
in the likeness of a machine rather than in the likeness of
God?
A definition of man in the Eleventh Edition of the Ency-
clopaedia Britannica is surely bound to inspire reverence for
the greatness of man. It says: Man is a seeker after the great-
est degree of comfort for the least necessary expenditure of
energy. D o we still recognize man here ?
In pre-Nazi Germany the following statement of man was
frequently quoted: The human body contains a sufficient
amount of fat to make seven cakes of soap, enough iron to
make a medium-sized nail, a sufficient amount of phosphorus
to equip two thousand match-heads, enough sulphur to rid
ones self of ones fleas. Perhaps there was a connection be-
tween this statement and what the Nazis actually did in the
extermination camps: make soap of human flesh.

* The first explicit statement Man a Machine goes back to L H om m e

machine, the title of the famous work by La Mettrie (1709-51), in which
human psychical activities are explained as mechanical functions of the
brain. Descartes had denied the possibility of conceiving man as a machine
(Discourse on M ethod, part V ).

24
 As descriptions of one of many aspects of the nature of man,
these definitions may indeed be correct. But when pretending
to express his essential meaning, they contribute to the grad
ual liquidation of mans self-understanding. And the liquida-
tion of the self-understanding of man may lead to the self-
extinction of man.
An important characteristic of our problem is that we do
not even know how to phrase the question; we are bewildered
and perplexed over what to ask about. W hat precisely do we
wish to know in asking the question about m an? Scrates
articulates his desire to know himself as the desire to know
mans disposition: Am I a monster more complicated and
more furious than the serpent Typhon, or a creature of a
gentler and simpler sort, to whom Nature has given a divine
and quiet lot ?*
However, what we seek to know about man is not only his
disposition, the facts of life, but also his meaning and voca-
tion, the goals of life. Beholding him piecemeal, we may come
upon his kinship to animality. Seen as a whole, however, the
situation of human being is one in which facts and goals, dis
position and thirst for meaning are intertwined.

The eclipse of humanity

A new skepticism has emerged. In the past, philosophv has
been motivated by a variety of ultimate questions. Can I be
sure of what I know ? Can I be sure of the reality of the ex
ternai world? Today it is the humanity of man that is no
longer self-evident, and the issue we face is: How can a hu
man being achieve certainty of his humanity?

* Vhaedrus 230.

25
 In the Middle Ages thinkers were trying to discover proofs
for the existence of God. Today we seem to look for proof for
the existence of man.
T h e term human has become ambiguous. It has the con-
notation of weakness. ( He is only human. Adam was but
human. T o err is human. A ll that I care to know is that
a man is a human beingthat is enough for m e; he cant be
any worse.) Y et the term is also used in the sense of mag-
nanimity ( T o step aside is human) as well as charity, par-
ticularly when spelled humane, which connotes feelings and
inclination proper to man, having tenderness, compassion,
and a disposition to treat other human beings and the lower
animais with kindness. W e speak of humane as opposed to
severe or strict justice.
The ambiguity of Homo sapiens is an old triviality. Both
praise and derision have been heaped profusely upon him. To
some, he is heavens masterpiece ; to others, Natures sole
mistake. Yet a note of compassion vibrates in the older dis-
courses about him. Today we are fiercely articulate in depre-
cation and disdain. He who would write a book in the praise
of man would be regarded as a half-wit or a liar. Man is be
ing excessively denounced and condemned by artists, philoso-
phers, and theologians. This is a typical view:
Since [Tennessee] Williams frankly declares himself to be an
evangelist, we may inquire what is the gospel, the good news,
which he has to oTer. Man is a beast. The onlv difference between
man and the other beasts is that man is a beast that knows he will
die. The only honest man is the unabashed egotist. This honest
man pours contempt upon the mendacity, the lies, the hypocrisy
of others who will not acknowledge their egotism. The one irre-
ducible value is life, which you must cling to as you can and use
for the pursuit of pleasure and of power. The specific ends of life

26
are sex and money. The great passions are lust and rapacity. So the
human comedy is an outrageous medley of lechery, alcoholism,
homosexuality, blasphemy, greed, brutality, hatred, obscenity. It is
not a tragedy because it has not the dignity of a tragedy. The man
who plays his role in it has on himself the marks of a total de-
pravity. And as for the ultimate and irreducible value, life, that
in the end is also a lie.*

Man has very few friends in the world, certainly very few
in the contemporary literature about him. The Lord in heaven
may prove to be his last friend on earth. Is it not possible that
the tantrum we witness is due to our being trapped by over-
whelming self-disdain, by a superior sense of inferiority ?
The tragedy of this creeping self-disparagement is in its cul-
tivation of the doubt whether man is worthy of being saved.
Massive defamation of man may spell the doom of all of us.
Moral annihilation leads to physical extermination. If man is
contemptible, why be upset about the extinction of the human
species ? The eclipse of humanity, the inability to sense our
spiritual relevance, to sense our being involved in the moral
task is itself a dreadful pnishment.

What is being human?

Man is our chief problem. His physical and mental reality
is beyond dispute; his meaning, his spiritual relevance is a
question that cries for an answer. Is it not right to suggest
that the agony of the contemporary man is the agony of a
spiritually stunted man ? The image of man is larger than the
frame into which he was contracted; we have underestimated

Robert E. Fitch, Secular Images o Man in Contemporary Literature,

Hcligious Education, LIII, 87; also in What Is the Nature o f Man? (Phila-
Irlphia, 1959), p. 60.

27
the nature of man. Even the form in which we ask the ques-
tion about man is biased by our own conception of man as a
thing. W e ask: What is man? Y et the true question should be:
Who is man?* As a thing man is explicable; as a person he is
both a mystery and a surprise. As a thing he is finite; as a per
son he is inexhaustible.
The popular definitions cited above offer an answer to the
question W hat is man ? in terms of his facticity, as a thing
of space. T h e question W ho is man ? is a question of worth,
a question of position and status within the order of beings.S
The self-certainty of the soul was valued by Augustine as
the surest of all experiences. Now what is the soul certain of ?
It is certain that it thinks, that it functions. Yet the problem
is not whether I function, or whether I am, but who I am.
And the first answer to the question: W ho is man ? is that
he is a being who asks questions concerning himself. It is in
asking such questions that man discovers that he is a person,
and it is the kind of questions he asks that reveals his condi-
tion.
Our question is not only: W hat is the nature of the human
species ? but also: W hat is the situation of the human individ-*

* "What is man? means what sort of thing is he? W ho is a pronoun

asking for the identifcation of a person or persons. The biblical question:
W hat is man, that Thou art mindful of h im . . (Psalm 8:4), W hat is
man, that Thou dost make so much of h im ... (Job 7:17) really means
what is the worth of man . . . ?
The question "Who is man? (phrased in the category of substance) is
by no means the only possible question in a reflection about man. In an old
rabbinic text three other questions are suggested: W hence did you come?
"W hither are you going? B efore w hom are you destined to give account?
And yet these questions presuppose the knowledge of an answer to the ques
tion: W ho is man?

28
uai? W hat is human about a human being? Specifically, our
theme is not only: W hat is a human being ? but also: W hat is
being human ?
Man is not only a special kind of being. His being human
depends upon certain relations without which he ceases to be
human. T h e decision to give priority to the question what is
human about a human being is based upon the assumption
that the category of human is not simply derived from the
category of being. The attribute human in the term human
being is not an accidental quality, added to the essence of
his being. It is the essence. Human being demands being hu
man. A n analysis of the human situation discloses a number of
essential modes of being human, a few of which I should like
to refer to in the next chapter.
It is indeed conceivable that man may continue to be with
out being human. Human being and being human are both
cxposed to danger, the latter even more than the former. Be
ing human must always be rescued from chos or extinction.
One of the most frightening prospects we must face is that
tliis earth may be populated by a race of beings which though
belonging to the race of Homo sapiens according to biology
will be devoid of the qualities by which man is spiritually dis-
tinguished from the rest of organic creatures. T o be human
we must know what being human means, how to acquire,
how to preserve it.
Just as death is the liquidation of being, dehumanization is
lhe liquidation of being human. W hat qualifies a being to be
called a human being ?
No one definition can fathom the depth of human being,
lhe intricate ways and byways in whom it is disclosed. Yet to
i laim that the question is unanswerable, and the problem in-

29
soluble, would be to surrender to the hope of attaining any
knowledge concerning significant issues, since the question
about man is a radical question and the significance of all
other questions we ask depends upon the answer we are ready
to oTer to this one.
Self-understanding seeks to comprehend my existence.
W hat do I supremely care for ? W hat do I dream of, aspire to ?
Facing myself as I am here and now I discover gold as well as
dross. W hat I come upon as I delve within myself is twilight,
confusion, contentment as well as not knowing what is ulti-
mately worth striving for. The mind unguided is groping in
the dark, the mind guided is the product of superimpositions.
Is it possible to achieve knowledge of the self ? Rationalism
operates with the assumption that whatever is can also be
\nown. It fails to distinguish between the world as given in
my mind, wrapped up in concepts and categories, and the
world as given to my mind as sheer being; between the self
as given in my explanations of certain behavioral forms and
the self as given to my mind. W hat is the self P W hat in me
remains identical throughout the changes and transforma-
tions to which I am subject, the forms of behavior, actions
and reactions?
The minimum of self-awareness comes to expression in the
words: I am. But who is I? And what does it mean to be?
The I is an epistemological pretext, a pseudonym for what
we do not know. I am is a marvel, a source of astonishment.
One can never recover from the surprise of just being here
and now.
It seems that the depth and mystery of a human being is
something that no analysis can grasp. The knowledge of man
we get from Science, for all its usefulness, strikes us as an over-

30
simplification; its definitions prove barren when applied to
actual human beings.
Ultimate self-penetration is neither possible nor desirable.
W hat we may aim at is a degree of self-understanding which
would enable us to proiect our living rather than let our liv
ing be a projection of crowd, a fashion or a whim. Our task
must includc the effort to discern and to disclose the authentic
as well as the unauthentic prepossessions, the honest as well
as dishonest manifestations of the inner life.
The exclamation of the Psalmist, I am fearfully and won-
derfully made! (139:14) expresses mans sense of wonder at
the mystery of his own existence. There is a depth of personal
existence that cannot be fully illumined, that eludes our gen-
eralizations. Yet the necessity to understand man is rough and
demanding.
T o ex-plain means to make plain. Yet the roots of existence
are never plain, never flat; existence is anchored in depth. One
cannot study the life of a tree by excavating its roots.
W hat follows is an attempt to describe some modes of being
human which every reader as a human being will recognize
and accept as essential. They rcpresent a requiredness rather
than a fabrication of the m ind; not postulates of morality but
fundamentais of human existence. Failure in nurturing the
essential sensibilities results in the decay of the humanity of
the individual man.
These features or sensibilities are no disparate trifles, ran-
dom impressions, arbitrarily registered, but rather neccssary
components which constitute the essence of being human.
They are not reflecting actual behavior but rather the wisdom
of a necessary self-awareness, a scope of interrelated features
within which man must be understood in his being human

31
as distinguished from being animal, from being beastly. They
are not simply given in mans consciousness, nor are they prop-
erties derived from his biological nature. His sheer being does
not guarantee them. However, they may be claimed of him,
expected of him. They emerge as manifestly true when a per-
son begins to ponder the latent substance of his self-under-
standing.

32
 Chapter three

Prcciousness
W hat do I see when I see a m an? I see him first as one
other specimen of the human species, then as a specific, par
ticular individual who can be named or identified; but then
he stands before me as the only entity in nature with which
sanctity is associated. A ll other sacred objects in space are
made holy by man. Human life is the only type of being we
consider intrinsically sacred, the only type of being we regard
as supremely valuable. The particular individual may not be
dcar to mein fact I may even dislike him. But he is dear to
somcone else, to his mother, for example, although that too
is not the reason for his eminence. For even if nobody cares
for him, he still is a human being.
Our way of seeing a person is diferent from our way of
sccing a thing. A thing we perceive, a person we meet. T o
mcct means not only to come upon, to come within the per-
irption of, but also to come into the presence of, or associa-
lion with, a person. T o meet means not only to confront but
also to agree, to join, to concur.
I low do I think when I think of a human being? T o think
o a thing is to think what I know; to think of a human being

33
is to think what I am. A thing I perceive in the light of my
knowledge; a human being I see in the image of my own be-
ing. In perceiving an animal, I come upon otherness; in meet-
ing a person, I come upon familiarity; like knowing like.
There is agreement of being, concurring of existence, a self
beholding a self. I see what I am.
There are two ways of facing and inspecting human being:
from within or from without. From within I face my own
being, here-and-now; from without I encounter my fellow
mans being-there. I suggest that although it is possible and
legitimate to ponder being in general or the being of all be-
ings, it is futile and impossible to ponder human being in gen
eral, the being of the human species, since my understanding
of, and my relation to, my own being always intrudes into any
reflection about the being of the human species. There is only
one way of comprehending mans being-there, and that is by
way of inspecting my own being.
W hat does my own being mean to me ? W hat confronts me
when I ponder my being here-and-now? My own being can
never be comprehended as a sample of pure ontology. It can
never be thought of as a pure fact.
My being here-and-now is not indifferent to me as another
being there-and-now may be. Looking upon myself from the
perspective of society or thinking comparatively, I am an aver-
age person. Facing myself intimately, immediately, I regard
myself as unique, as exceedingly precious, not to be exchanged
for anything else. I would not like my existence to be a total
waste, an utter absurdity. No one will live my life for me, no
one will think my thoughts for me or dream my dreams. My
own being, placed as it is in the midst of many beings, is not
simply being here too, being around, being part of the envi-

34
ronment. It is at the very center of my consciousness that I am
distinct.
It is through the awareness that I am not only an everybody
that I evolve as a self, as somebody, as a person, as something
that cannot be repeated, something for which there is no du-
plicate, no substitute. It is in the awareness of my being some
body that freedom comes to pass.
I am exceedingly noteworthy, exceedingly relevant to my-
self, and it is the notability of my existence that becomes elu-
sive when looked upon from without, from the perspective of
society, from the viewpoint of generalization. In other words,
although my singularity is a matter of personal certainty to
me, it looks like a conceit from the perspective of statistics or
manpower administration. Luminous from within, my nota
bility seems opaque if not absurd from without.
In the eyes of the world, I repeat, I am an average man. But
to my heart I am not an average man. T o my heart I am of
great moment. The challenge I face is how to actualize, how
to concretize the quiet eminence of my being.
Beyond all agony and anxiety lies the most important in-
gredient of self-reflection: the preciousness of my own exis
tence. T o my own heart my existence is unique, unprecedent-
ed, priceless, exceedingly precious, and I resist the thought of
gambling away its meaning.
In the actual lives of actual men, life even when felt to be
a burden is cherished deeply, valued supremely, accepted in
its reality. The truth of human being is the love of being alive.
It is as a result of extreme abuse and dcsecration of being that
man brings upon himself the punishment of disgust with be
ing.
Disgust of being, a sense of being trapped in the world, is

35
 really a situation of being trapped in presumption. W hen man
becomes his own idol, the tablets are broken. Is not the exag-
gerated anxiety about death due to presumption: the un-
spoken claim to go on living without dying?
Man is obliged to say: It is for my sake that the world
was created (Sanhedrin 37a). There is a task that only I, and
I alone, can carry out, a task so great that its fulfillment may
epitomize the meaning of all humanity.
The fundamental problem of ethics has been expressed as
the question: W hat ought I do ? The weakness of this formu-
lation is in separating doing from the sheer being of the I,
as if the ethical problem were a special and added aspect of
a persons existence. However, the moral issue is deeper and
more intimately related to the self than doing. The very ques
tion: W hat ought I to do? is a moral act. It is not a problem
added to the self; it is the self as a problem.
The moral problem can be treated only as a personal prob
lem : How should I live the life that I am ? My life is the task,
the problem, and the challenge.
The moral deed is important not only because the commu-
nity, for example, needs it. It is important because without it
there is no grasp of what is human about my being human.
T his formulation stands in contrast with another starting
point for the moral inquiry: There are moral ideais and val-
ues; how shall I attain them?

Uniqueness
W hy are we puzzled about man ? Biologically man is easily
defined or classified. Yet even though we may be able to de
fine the human species and to place it in relation to the animal
world, we quickly discover that such a definition is of little

36
value in trying to understand thc relations of man to man, or
in our effort to understand our own selves.
It is the uniqueness of man that puzzles our mind. All other
beings seem to fit perfectly into a natural order and are deter-
mined by permanent principies. Man alone occupies a unique
status. As a natural being he is determined by natural laws.
As a human being he must frequently choose; confined in his
existence, he is unrestrained in his will. His acts do not ema-
nate from him like rays of energy from matter. Placed in the
parting of the ways, he must time and again decide which di-
rection to take. The course of his life is, accordingly, unpre-
dictable; no person can write his autobiography in advance.
Generalization, by means of which theories evolve, fails in
trying to understand man. For in dealing with a particular
man, I do not come upon a generality but upon an individu-
ality, a person. It is precisely the exclusive application of gen-
eralities to human situations that accounts for many of our
failures.
T o my mind my existence is a course of events, a lifelong
situation which is unique, a going-on-ness that cannot be re-
peated, for which there can be no substitute. My existence as
an event is an original, not a copy. N o two human beings are
alike. A major mode of being human is uniqueness. Every
human being has something to say, to think, or to do which
is unprecedented. It is the crust, the make-up, the conformity,
that tends to reduce existence to a generality.
Being human is a noveltynot a mere repetition or exten-
sion of the past, but an anticipation of things to come. Being
human is a surprise, not a foregone conclusion. A person has
a capacity to create events. Every person is a disclosure, an ex-
ample of exclusiveness.

37
 A human being has not only a body but also a face. A face
cannot be grafted or interchanged. A face is a message, a face
speaks, often unbeknown to the person. Is not the human face
a living mixture of mystery and meaning? W e are all able to
see it, and are all unable to describe it. Is it not a strange mar-
vel that among so many hundreds of millions of faces, no two
faces are alike ? And that no face remains quite the same for
more than one instant ? The most exposed part of the body,
the best known, it is the least describable, a synonym for
an incarnation of uniqueness. Can we look at a face as if it
were a commonplace ?
Individual examples of any kind of being are nameless; but
every individual human being claims a name. A human indi
vidual is not a mere example or specimen of his species. You
distort him by disregarding his uniqueness.
Being means striving to go on, to go along, to extend, to
continue. Yet being human means to go beyond sheer con-
tinuity. Being human occurs, comes about in moments. Being
human consists of outbursts of singularity. Singularity is a di-
mension easily forgotten, always threatened by the continuous
assaults of wholesaleness. Sheer continuity leads to the suspen-
sion of singularity, drudgery, inner devastation, demolition of
all moments. T o discover the hospitality of being, one must
cultivate the art of reaching beyond oneself. A life rising in
outbursts into meaning is a way of sensing the beneficence of
time.
No man is an average man. The ordinary, typical man, the
common run undistinguished either by his superiority or by
his inferiority, is the homunculus of statistics. In real life there
is no ordinary, undistinguished man, unless man resigns him-

38
self to be drowned in indifference and commonness. Spiritual
suicide is within everybodys reach.

Opportunity
The passage of beingof man or animalis marked and
fixed: from birth to death. The passage of being human leads
through a maze: the dark and intricate maze we call the inner
life of man. That maze must not be conceived as a structure,
as a permanent setup; it is an exuberance that goes on, fre-
quently defying pattern, rule, and form. The inner life is a
State of constantly increasing, indefinitely spreading complex-
ity. Left to himself, man of necessity goes astray; he is in need
of guidance at every step.
Is there a guide for the labyrinth of man ? T h e necessity of
guidance is a mode of being human. Animal life is a straight
path; the inner life is a maze, and no one can find his way
through or about without guidance. Such is the condition
from which there is no escape.
One thing that sets man apart from animais is a boundless,
unpredictable capacity for the development of an inner uni-
verse. There is more potentiality in his soul than in any other
being known to us. Look at the infant and try to imagine the
multitude of events it is going to engender. One child named
Johann Sebastian Bach was charged with power enough to
liold generations of men in his spell. But is there any poten
tiality to acclaim or any surprise to expect in a calf or a colt?
Indeed, the enigma of human being is not in what he is but
in what he is able to be.*

* From A. J. Heschel, Man h N ot Alone (New York, 19 51), p. 209.

39
 W hat is obvious about man is a minimum of what is latent
in him. It may be fcasible to describe what the human species
is; it is beyond our power to conceive what the human species
is able to be.
Since the outstanding mark of man is the superiority of the
possibilities of his being over the actuality of his being, we
must not confine our understanding to what he is in his fac-
ticity. W c must look beyond the facts in order to do justice
to him. Man must be understood as a complex of opportuni-
ties as wcll as a bundle of facts.
T o understand the problem of man in human terms we
must not conceive of him in terms of physics, as a thing in
which energy is stored away in some latent manner, but rather
in categories of personal thinking and personal cxperience as
a person who is called upon to be more than what he is. The
task is not actualization of potentiality but understanding, ac-
knowledging, answering, going beyond the status quo.

Nonfinality
Where is man ? At what stage of his life and in what situa-
tion of his existence do we meet him as he really is ? He is vari-
able, fickle, appearing in different roles. Is he the same as
father or motbcr as he is as salesman or soldier? Does he re-
main the same from the cradle to the grave, from the cave to
the rocket ?
All the definitions cited above have a ring of finality and
presume to be definitive. Howcver, there is no such entity as
man in his permanent and final form. Man is rarely to be
found in a definitive edition. A salient characteristic of being
human is inconstancy both in behavior and in self-under-
standing, inability to remain what he is once and for all. Fi-

40
nality and humanity seem to be mutually exclusive. Man is
caught in the polarity o being both tentative, undecided, un-
settled as well as final, fixed, determined.
Anything is possible. The ambiguity of his traits and the
ambivalence of his actions are such that his consistency in
volves inner contradiction. Man has many faces. W hich is
canonical and which is apocryphal?
T o understand his being it is not enough to see him as he
acts here and now, for example, as conditioned by our indus
trial society. Man is a being in flux. Yielding to a particular
pattern of living he remains both compliant and restive, con-
forming and rebellious, captive and insurgent.
Animal being is thoroughly explicit, whereas human being
is profoundly implicit. A stone is characterized by its finality,
whereas mans outstanding quality is in his being a surprise.
T o claim to be what I am not is a pretension. T o insist that
I must be only what I am now is a restriction which human
nature must abhor. The being of a person is never completed,
final. The status of a person is a status nascendi. T h e choice is
made moment by moment. There is no standing still.
A n elemental consciousness, free of all content, pristine and
pure, has probably never existed. W e certainly cannot conceive
of pure consciousness, devoid of contcnt, devoid of designs,
intentions, implications, and conceptions. Thus we can only
analyze the consciousness as it is already pregnant and filled
with components.
It is a fatal illusion to assume that to be human is a fact given
with human being rather than a goal and an achievement.
T o animais the world is what it is; to man this is a world
in the making, and being human means being on the way,
striving, waiting, hoping.

4i
 Neither authenticity of existence nor the qualities of being
human are safe properties. They are to be achieved, cultivated,
and protected. W e often live pretentiously, deceiving ourselves
as well as others. Society, tradition, and conscience are all in-
volved in us. T o be human we must know what humanity
means and how to acquire it. Our being human is always on
trial, full of risk, precarious. Being human is an opportunity
as well as a fact.

Process and events

In the awareness of my personhood I do not come upon
sheer consciousness or a block of reality called the self, but up
on the power to create events. Being human is not a thing, a
substance; it is a moment that happens; not a process but a se-
quence of acts or events. The self that I am, the self that I come
upon, has the ability to combine a variety of functions and in-
tentions in order to bring about a result, the meaning or value
of which transcends my own existence.
T o be human is to intend, to decide, to challenge, not merely
to go on, to react, or to be an effect. W hat is unique about man
is in the way he relates himself to what is not in him. His ex
istence is not a thing replete with energy but an interplay of
a process and events.
W hat is the difference between process and event P A pro
cess happens regularly, following a relatively permanent pat-
tern; an event is extraordinary, irregular. A process may be
continuous, steady, uniform ; events happen suddenly, in-
termittently, occasionally. Processes are typical; events are
unique. A process follows a law, events create a precedent.
A process occurs in the physical order. But not all events

42
are reducible tu physical terms. The life of Beethoven left
music behind; yet valued in physical terms its effects on the
world were felt less than the effect of a normal rainstorm or
an earthquake.
Man lives in an order of events, not only in an order of pro
cesses. It is a spiritual order. Moments of insight, moments of
decision, moments of prayerthese may be insignificant in
the world of space, yet they put life into focus.
Nature is made up of processesorganic life, for example,
may be described as consisting of the processes of birth,
growth, maturity, and decay; history consists primarily of
events. W hat lends human, historical character to the life of
Pericles or Aristotle are not the organic processes through
which they went but the extraordinary, surprising, and un-
predictable acts, achievements, or events which distinguished
them from other human beings.
An event is a happening that cannot be reduced to a part
of a process. It is something we can neither predict nor fully
explain. T o speak of events is to imply that there are happen-
ings in the world that are beyond the reach of our generali-
zations.
Being human is not a solid structure or a string of predict-
able facts, but an incalculable series of moments and acts.* As
a process man may be described biologically; as an event he
can only be understood creatively, dramatically. As a process
life operates regularly. Its normality is in its repetitiousness;
breakfast every morning, digestion every evening. However,
everydayness, sameness, drearihood is a condition that stulti-

* A. J. Heschel, God in Search o j Man (New York, 1955), pp. 209-ro.

43
fies mans inner drives, affects negatively the process, the norm
of which is repetitiousness. An extra ingredient which the
positivist is unable to define goes into the make-up of human
existence: the power to create an event. Deficiency of such
power is a deadly sickness.
The alphabet of living is capable of forming a nearly infi-
nite number of combinations, or situations. Yet some people
have never acquired more than the spellingof one word: ditto,
reducing all singularity to commonness.
The art of spelling the language of living involves mans
relating himself to what is not in him, facing up to the truth
that he is not simply around, that even boredom can be a Cre
ative clash. All terms of living tend to become stale. Inner re-
newal is a vital necessity.
Life lived as an event is a drama. Life reduced to a process
becomes vegetation. The awareness of life as a drama comes
about as a result of knowing that one has a part to play, of
realizing that the self is unprecedented and of refusing to re-
gard existence as a waste.

Solitude and solidarity

Self-sufficiency, independence, the capacity to stand apart,
to difer, to resist, and to defyall are modes of being human.
There is no dignity without the ability to stand alone. One
must withdraw and be still in order to hear. Solitude is a nec-
essary protest to the incursions and the false alarms of societys
hysteria, a period of cure and recovery.
The truth, however, is that man is never alone. It is to-
gether with all my contemporaries that I live, sufer, and re-
joice, even while living in seclusion. Genuine solitude is not

44
discarding but distilling humanity. Genuine solitude is a
search for genuine solidarity. Man alone is a conceit. He is
for the sake of, by the strength of, unknowingly and even
knowingly involved in the community of man.
Man in his being is derived from, attended by, and directed
to the being of community. For man to be means to be with
other human beings. His existence is coexistence. He can
never attain fulfillment, or sense meaning, unless it is shared,
unless it pertains to other human beings.
Although it is true that in order to grasp the meaning of
being human we analyze the human individual rather than
the human species, any analysis that disregards social involve-
ment, mans interdependence and correlativity, will miss the
heart of being human.
Human solidarity is not the product of being hum an; being
human is the product of human solidarity. Indeed, even the
most personal concern, the search for meaning, is utterly
meaningless as a pursuit of personal salvation. Its integrity
discloses compassion, a hope or intuition of meaning in which
all men may share.
Even preoccupation with the self, self-defense and self-
aggrandizement, typical of all men, includes in its conscious-
ness acknowledgment of the existence and dignity of other
men. The prestige a person seeks involves respect for others
whose recognition is desired. All achievements are born in the
conviction that what is good for me will prove to be good for
others.
T o be is an intransitive verb; to be human, I repeat, is
more than just to be. Man reflects about his being, and his
reflection discloses to him that in order to be he must contin-

45
ually accept what is not his own, since being is never self-
sufficient.

Reciprocity
Science is a way of interpreting experiences. For the self-
understanding of man it is important to realize that experi
ences interpret and elucidate man.
The primary experience with which we begin in our in-
fancy and continue in our childhood is obtaining and seizing
things we care for. Developing and entering maturity we be-
come involved in giving and providing for those we care for.
These are fundamental facts and must be recognized as pri
mary data in the make-up of living, independent of motiva-
tions that may afect their intensity.
W e receive continually; our very being is a gift in the form
of an enigma; a breath of fresh air is inhalation of grace. Full-
ness of existence, personal being is achieved by what we offer
in return. How shall I ever repay to the Lord all the bounty
He has given to m e! (Psalm 116:12) is a genuine question
of man. The dignity of human existence is in the power of
reciprocity.
For every new insight we must pay a new deed. W e must
strive to maintain a balance of power and mercy, of truth and
generosity. Knowledge is a debt, not a private property. T o be
a person is to reciprocate, to offer in return for w hat one re-
ceives. Reciprocity involves appreciation. Biologically we all
take in and give off. I become a person by knowing the mean-
ing of receiving and giving. I become a person when I begin
to reciprocate.
The degree to which one is sensitive to other peoples suf-
fering, to other mens humanity, is the index of ones own
humanity. It is the root not only for social living but also of
the study of humanities. The vital presupposition of the phi-
losophers question about man is his care for man.
The opposite of humanity is brutality, the failure to ac-
knowledge the humanity of ones fellow man, the failure to
be sensitive to his needs, to his situation. Brutality is often due
to a failure of imagination as well as to the tendency to treat
a person as a generality, to regard a person as an average man.
Man achieves fullness of being in fellowship, in care for
others. He expands his existence by bearing his fellow-mans
burden. As we have said, animais are concerned for their
own needs; the degree of our being human stands in direct
proportion to the degree in which we care for others.
The central problem in terms of biblical thinking is not:
W hat is to be ? but rather: How to be and how not to be ?
The issue yve face is not the dichotomy of being and mis-
being, but that of righteous and unrighteous being. T h e ten-
sion is not between existence and essence but between exis
tence and performance. For animais as well as for human be-
ings when in peril and anguish the problem is to be or not to
be. W hat distinguishes a human being is that his problem is
how to be and how not to be. Indeed, man alone is motivated
by the awareness of the insufficiency of sheer being, of sheer
living. Man alone is open to the problem of how to be and
how not to be on all leveis of his existence.
Our first theme, then, is not what man is but how he is, not
human being but being human, which is the sum of many
relationships in which a human being is involved.
In the actual human situation to be is inseparable from
how to be. Thus on the levei of his being human the pro-
cess of his being stands over against him as a question: How

47
should I live the existence that I am ? Thus we see that the
implied intent of the question, Who is man? is really, H ow
is man?

Sanctity
As said above, man is the only entity in nature with which
sanctity is associated. Sanctity of human life is not something
we know conceptually, established on the basis of premises;
it is an underived insight. It is not a quality that man can be-
stow upon him self; it is either bestowed upon us or spurious.
W e come upon it first in pondering the mystery of another
persons life, and subsequently in the realization that ones
own life is not something acquired or owned. Life is some
thing I am. W hat I have is m ine; what I am is not mine. Life
is not my property.
Being human involves being sensitive to the sacred. The
objects regarded as sacred may differ from country to coun-
try, yet sensitivity to the sacred is universal.
The acceptance of the sacred is an existential paradox: it is
saying yes to a no; it is the antithesis of the will to power; it
may contradict interests and stand in the way of satisfying
inner drives.
To our sense of power the world is at our disposal, to be
exploited to our advantage. T o accept the sacred is an ac-
knowledgment that certain things are not available to us, are
not at our disposal., Howcver, it is a profound misunderstand-
ing to think of the sacred in terms of negativity. Its negativity
and scparateness is but a protective screen for the positive as-
pect of the sacred. For accepting the sacred means not only
giving up caims,but also facing a unique dimension of reality.
W hat is the positive aspect of the sacred ? Being a unique

48
quality, it is not capable of being described in terms of any
other quality, just as beauty cannot be described in terms of
goodness. The sacred is perceptible to the sense of the sacred.
The beauty of a beautiful object is inherent in the object,
whereas the sanctity of a sacred object transcends the object.
Beauty is given with the nature of a thing, sanctity is imposed
on things. Beauty is in the form of an object, sanctity in its
status.
There are degrees of sanctity, but they all share one aspect:
ultimate preciousness. T o sense the sacred is to sense what is
dear to God. Its mode of being difers from the modes of be
ing of other qualities.
It is true that sacred objects are objects set apart from the
rest of reality, but it is a mistake to regard the sacred and the
profane as absolute contrasts. For some parts of reality to be
endowed with sanctity, all of reality must be a reflection of
sanctity. Reality embraces the actually sacred and the poten-
tially sacred.

49
 Chapter four

The dimension of meaning

W e have expressed the problem of man in the form of ask-
ing: W hat is being human ? Tw o other themes implied in our
problem must be considered now.
1. W hat is being P
2. W hat is the meaning of human being ?
The first theme dawns upon us in moments of radical
amazement, when all answers, words, categories are suddenly
disclosed to be a veneer, and the mystery of being strikes us
as a problem that lurks behind many other problems. The
second theme is not a question of semanticshow to define
in reasonable terms the phrase human beingbut one that
goes far beyond the limits of self-understanding. It is an effort
to understand the self (as well as all humanity) in terms
larger than the self.
Human being is never sheer being; it is always involved in

Some paragraphs in this chapter are taken from my book Man Is Not
Alone (New York, 19 51), pp. 9iff., and from my study The Concept of
Man in Jewish Thought, in T he Concept o f Man, ed. S. Radhakrishnan
and P. T. Raju (London, 1960), pp. 108-57.

50
meaning. The dimension of meaning is as indigenous to his
being human as the dimension of space is to stars and stones.
Just as man occupies a position in space, so has he a status in
what may be called metaphorically a dimension of meaning.
H e is involved even when unaware of it. He may be Creative
or destructive; he cannot live outside it. Human being is either
Corning into meaning or betraying it. The concern for mean
ing, the gist of all Creative efforts, is not self-imposed; it is a
necessity of his being.
T o the mind exposed to the reality that confronts us the
paramount problem is being, yet to the mind attuned to the in-
timate human situation the excruciating, heart-rending prob
lem is meaning. It is upon the intuition or affirmation of
meaning that the sense of significant beingthe sign of men
tal healthdepends.
W e would miss the aim of this search by reducing it to a
search for the true self, for true being, for human nature.
The search is for significant being, for self-understanding as
well as for belonging and attachment to a transcendent order
of meaning. It indudes an examination of the qualities of liv
ing that constitute significant being.
The attempt to identify the meaning of being a person or
a human being is the indispensable prerequisite for bringing
order into existence. It would be unfortunate for a person to
live without a conventional name; it is disastrous for a per
son to live without inner identity. A name we simply receive
and remember; spiritual identity we must strive for, come
upon, acquire, enhance, and live by.
A person wakes up one day and maintains that he is a
rooster. W e do not know what he means, and assign him to

5i
 an insane asylum. But when a person wakes up one day and
maintains that he is a human being, we also do not know what
he means.
Assuming that the earth were endowed with psychic power,
it would raise the question: W ho is hethe strange intruder
who clips my wings, who trims my gardens ? He who cannot
live without me and is not quite a part of me ?
There are many facets and facts of my being of which I am
aware and which remain peripheral and irrelevant to the un-
derstanding of my existence. W hat upsets me most is: W hat
is the meaning of my being ?
Mental anguish is occasioned more by the experience or
fear of meaningless being, of meaningless events, than by the
mystery of being, by the absence of being, or by the fear of
non-being. The two problems, however, are interdependent.
T his may be illustrated in dealing with the theme of our in-
quiry. It is the meaning of man that illumines the being of
man, and it is the being of man that both evokes and verifies
the meaning of man.
The problem of being and the problem of the meaning of
being are not coextensive. In regard to man, the first problem
refers to what he is in terms of his own existence, human be
ing as it is; the second refers to>what man means in terms
larger than himself, being in terms of meaning.
My questmans questis not for theoretical knowlcdge
about myself. Another discovery of a universal law in nature
will not answer my problem. Nor is it simply a striving to ex-
tend the length of my life span into an afterlife.
W hat I look for is not how to gain a firm hold on myself
and on life, but primarily how to live a life that would de-
serve and evoke an eternal Amen. It is not simply a search for

52
certitude (though that is implied in it), but for personal rele-
vance, for a degree of compatibility; not an anchor of being
but a direction of being. It is not enough for me to be able
to say I am ; I want to know who I am, and in relation to
whom I live. It is not enough for me to ask questions; I want
to know how to answer the one question that seems to encom-
pass everything I face: W hat am I here for?
The given datum is mans bewilderment about himself, the
fact of his being a problem to himself, of looking for a context
to which he belongs and in which to be involved. Mans an-
guish is in the fear of finding himself locked out of the order
of ultimate meaning.
Disregard of the ultimate dimension of human existence is
a possible State of mind as long as man finds tranquillity in his
dedication to partial objectives. But strange things happen at
times to disturb his favorite unawareness, which make it
impossible for him not to realize that evasiveness is offensive-
ness.
In the face of a world full of anguish, of the incoherence of
existence, the discovery of our own evasion is a nightmare.
W hen death wipes away a love we have long cherished and
taken for granted, when joy deserts us and all common values
become vapid, and present moments seem obsolescent, we are
bound to realize the peril of evasiveness. Our apprehension
lest in winning small prizes we gamble our lives away, throws
our souls open to questions we have been trying to avoid.
It is not only the question of how to justify our own exis
tence, but above all, how to justify bringing human beings
into the world. If human existence is absurd and miserable,
why give birth to children? Do we build cities in order to
supply ruins for the archaeologists of a later age? Do we rear

53
 children in order to prepare ashes for the outcome of nuclear
wars?
But what is there at stake in human life that may be
gambled away ? It is the meaning of life. In all acts he per-
forms, man raises a claim to meaning. The trees he plants,
the tools he invents, are answers to a need or a purpose. In its
very essence, consciousness is a dedication to design. Commit-
ted to the task of coalescing being with meaning, things with
ideas, the mind is driven to ponder whether meaning is some-
thing it may invent and invest, something that ought to be
attained, or whether there is meaning to existence as it is, to
existence as existence, independent of what we may add to it.
In other words, is there meaning only to what man does, but
none to what he is ? Becoming conscious of himself he does
not stop at knowing: I am ; he is driven to know who he
is. Man may, indeed, be characterized as a subject in quest of
a predicate, as a being in quest of a meaning of life, of all of
life, not only of particular actions or single episodes which
happen now and then.
Meaning denotes a condition that cannot be reduced to a
material relation and grasped by the sense organs. Meaning
is compatibility with the preciously real; it is, furthermore,
that which a fact is for the sake of something else; the preg-
nancy of an object with value. Life is precious to man. But is it
precious to him alone ? Or is someone else in need of it ?
Imbedded in the mind is a certainty that the State of exis
tence and the state of meaning stand in a relation to each
other, that life is assessable in terms of meaning. The will to
meaning and the certainty of the legitimacy of our striving to
ascertain it are as intrinsically human as the will to live and
the certainty of being alive.

54
 In spite of failures and frustrations, wc continue to be
haunted by that irrepressible quest. W e can never accept the
idea that life is hollow and devoid of meaning.
If at the root of philosophy is not a self-contempt of the
mind but the minds concern for its ultimate surmise, then
our aim is to examine in order to know. Seeking contentment
in a brilliant subterfuge, we are often ready to embezzle the
original surmise. But why should we even care to doubt, if
we cease to surmise ? Philosophy is what man dares to do with
his ultimate surmise of the meaning of existence.
A question to be legitimate must have a chance of being
answered. It must entail the beginning or the forecast of an
answer if it is to be more than an exclamation of despair. Its
answerability is indicated in the logical relation of the ele-
ments contained in the question. A question such as: Is ura-
nium male or female? is absurd, since the subject stands in
no relation to the predicate of the question. W e must, there-
fore, ask whether the subject human existence is congruous
with the predicate. Is human existence assessable in meaning
or are the two concepts incongruous or disparate ?
Significant being includes satisfaction of needs and desires,
realization of ones capacities as well as a craving transcend-
ing these; attainment of beauty, goodness, truth, love, and
friendship as well as sensitivities that engender a sense of
embarrassment rather than the shelter of self-contentment.
The imperative according to the logic of biology may be:
Eat, drink, and be merry! Yet a life essentially dedicated
to the fulfillment of such an imperative results in depriving
human being of all the qualities of being human.
W hat we are in search of is not meaning for me, an idea
to satisfy my conscience, but rather a meaning transcending

55
me, ultimate relevance of human being. There is an appeal to
which human being is exposed and occasionally sensitive: an
urging for significant being. Being as being is intransitive,
going-on-ness, continuity; significant being is transitive, go-
ing beyond itself, centrifugai.
This, indeed, is the existential paradox. In everydayness the
care and solicitude for the self surpass in importance consid-
erations of other goals. Yet, human being without an inkling
of a relevance surpassing it is devoid of sense. T h e self is in
need of a meaning which it cannot furnish itself.

The essence of being human

T h e central question provoked by our description is whether
that quest is authentic, rooted in existence, emerging with ne-
cessity from our being, or whether it is mere pretension, a de-
fense mechanism, an apologetic device. Is there any sign of
our existence not being reducible to just being ?
W hy be concerned with meaning? W hy not be content
with satisfaction of desires and needs ? Life should be a per-
fect circle: desire . . . pleasure. . . desire. . . pleasure. . . T o be
concerned with meaning is to go off on a tangent leading to
the infinite.
One is, indeed, tempted to dismiss the whole quest for
meaning as a passing mood resulting from misguidance in
dealing with biological drives, as an imposition by society, or
as an artificial superstructure set up by the mind.
According to Freud, the deepest essence of man is the orga
nismo instincts, and their satisfaction mans authentic occu-
pation. However, what is defined here relates to bios ( lif e ) ;
it does not relate to existence, which embraces both bios and
being human. The vital drives of food, sex, and power, as well

56
as the mental functions aimed at satisfying them, are as char-
acteristic of animais as they are of man. Being human is a
characteristic of a being who faces the question: Afer satis-
faction, what? The circle of need and satisfaction, of desire
and pleasure, is too narrow for the fullness of his existence.
Bios, or life, requires satisfaction; existence requires appreci-
ation. Satisfaction is a sensory experience bringing about an
end to a desire. Appreciation is an imponderable experience,
an opening up, the beginning of a thirst that knows no final
satisfaction.
From the perspective of a philosophy of satisfaction, the
quest for significant being, which assumes that complete sat
isfaction is not desirable or conceivable or even possible, must
be regarded as a perversion. Yet the logic of being human in-
sists that mans total existence is pledged to the truth that the
quest for significant being is the heart of existence.
W e do not crave that quest; we find ourselves involved in
it. There is no planning, no initiative on our part to embark
upon it. There are only moments of finding ourselves in it.
Animais are content when their needs are satisfied; man
insists not only on being satisfied but also on being able to
satisfy, on being a need not simply on having needs. Personal
needs come and go, but one anxiety remains: Am I needed ?
There is no human being who has not been moved by that
anxiety.
It is a most significant fact that man is not sufficient to him-
self, that life is not meaningful to him unless it is serving an
end beyond itself, unless it is of value to someone else.
Man is not an all-inclusive end to himself. T h e second
maxim of Kants, never to use human beings merely as means
but to regard them also as ends, only suggests how a person

57
 ought to be treated by other people, not how he ought to treat
himself. For if a person thinks that he is an end to himself,
then he will use others as means. Moreover, if the idea of man
as an end is to be taken as a true estimate of his worth, he
cannot be expected to sacrifice his life or his interests for the
good of someone else or even of a group. He must treat him
self the way he expects others to treat him. W hy should even
a group or a whole people be worth the sacrifice of ones life ?
T o a person who regards himself as an absolute end a thou-
sand lives will not be worth more than his own life.
Sophisticated thinking may enable him to feign his being
sufficient to himself. Yet the way to insanity is paved with
such illusions. T h e feeling of futility that comes with the
sense of being useless, of not being needed in the world, is
the most common cause of psychoneurosis. T h e only way to
avoid despair is to be a need rather than an end. Happiness,
in fact, may be defined as the certainty of being needed. But
who is in need of man ?
The first answer that comes to mind is a social onemans
purpose is to serve society or mankind. The ultimate worth
of a person would then be determined by his usefulness to
others, by the efficiency of his social work. Yet, in spite of his
instrumentalist atttiude, man expects others to take him not
for what he may mean to them but as a being valuable in
himself. Even he who does not regard himself as an absolute
end rebels against being treated as a means to an end, as sub-
servient to other men. The rich, the men of the world want
to be loved for their own sake, for their essence, whatever it
may mean, not for their achievements or possessions. Nor do
the old and sick expect help because of what they may give
us in return. W ho needs the old, the incurably sick, the main-

58
tenance of whom is a drain on the treasury of the State ? It is,
moreover, obvious that such Service does not claim all ones
life and can therefore not be the ultimate answer to his quest
of meaning for life as a whole. Man has more to give than
what other men are able or willing to accept. T o say that life
could consist of care for others, of incessant service to the
world, would be a vulgar boast. W hat we are able to bestow
upon others is usually less and rarely more than a tithe.
There are alleys in the soul where man walks alone, ways
that do not lead to society, a world of privacy that shrinks
from the public eye. Life comprises not only arable, produc-
tive land, but also mountains of dreams, an underground of
sorrow, towers of yearning, which can hardly be utilized to
the last for the good of society, unless man be converted into
a machine in which every screw must serve a function or be
removed. It is a profiteering State which, trying to exploit the
individual, asks all of man for itself.
And if society as embodied in the State should prove to be
corrupt and my effort to cure its evil unavailing, would my
life as an individual have been totally void of meaning? If
society should decide to reject my Services and even place me
in solitary confinement, so that I would surely die without be-
ing able to bequeath any benefit to the world I love, would
I then feel compelled to end my life ?
Human existence cannot derive its ultimate meaning from
society, because society itself is in need of meaning. It is as
legitimate to ask: Is mankind needed? as it is to ask: Am I
needed ?
Humanity begins in the individual man, just as history
takes its rise from a singular event. It is always one man at
a time whom we keep in mind when we pledge: with mal-

59
ice toward none, with charity for all or when trying to ful-
fill: Love thy neighbor as thyself. The term mankind,
which in biology denotes the human species, has an entirely
different meaning in the realm of ethics and religion. Here
mankind is not conceived as a species, as an abstract concept,
stripped from its concrete reality, but as an abundance of spe-
cific individuais; as a community of persons rather than as
a herd of nondescripts.
It is true that the good of all counts more than the good of
one, but it is the concrete individual who lends meaning to
the human race. W e do not think that a human being is valu-
able because he is a member of the race; it is rather the oppo-
site: the human race is valuable because it is composed c f hu
man beings.
Though we are dependent on society as well as on the air
that sustains us, and though other men compose the system
of relations in which the curve of our actions takes its course,
it is as individuais that we are beset with desires, fears, and
hopes, challenged, called upon, and endowed with the power
of will and a spark of responsibility.
But who is in need of man? N ature? Do the mountains
stand in need of our poems? W ould the stars fade away if
astronomers ceased to exist ? The earth can get along without
the aid of the human species. Nature is replete with oppor-
tunity to satisfy all our needs except onethe need of being
needed. W ithin its unbroken silence man is like the middle
of a sentence and all his theories are like dots indicating his
isolation within his own self.
Unlike all other needs, the need o f being needed is a striving
to give rather than to obtain satisfaction. It is a desire to satisfy
a transcendent desire, a craving to satisfy a craving.

6o
 A ll needs are one-sided. W hen hungry we are in need of
food, yet food is not in need of being consumed. Things of
beauty attract our minds; we feel the need of perceiving them,
yet they are not in need of being perceived by us. It is in such
one-sidedness that most of living is imprisoned. Examine an
obtuse mind, and you will find that it is dominated by an ef-
fort to cut reality to the measure of the ego, as if the world
existed for the sake of pleasing ones ego. Everyone of us enter-
tains more relations with things than with people, and even in
dealings with people we behave toward them as if they were
things, tools, means to be used for our own selfish ends. How
rarely do we face a person as a person! W e are all dominated
by the desire to appropriate and to own. Only a free person
knows that the true meaning of existence is experienced in
giving, in endowing, in meeting a person face to face, in ful-
filling higher needs.
All our experiences are needs, dissolving when the needs are
fulfilled. But the truth is, our existence, too, is a need. W e are
such stuff as needs are made of, and our little life is rounded by
a will. Lasting in our life ismeither passion nor delight, neither
joy nor pain, but the answer to a need. T h e lasting in us is not
our will to live. There is a need for our lives, and in living we
satisfy it. Lasting is not our desire, but our answer to that need,
an agreement not an impulse. Our needs are temporal, but our
being needed is lasting.
O f all phenomena which take place in the soul, desires have
the highest rate of mortality. Like aquatic plants, they grow
and live in the waters of oblivion, impatient to vanish. Inher-
ent in desire is the intention to expire; it asserts itself in order
to be quenched, and in attaining satisfaction it comes to an
end, singing its own dirge.

61
 Such suicidai intention is not vested in all human acts.
Thoughts, concepts, laws, theories are born with the intent to
endure. A problem, for example, does not cease to be relevant
when its solution is achieved. Inherent in reason is the inten
tion to endure, a striving to comprehend the valid, to form con
cepts the cogency of which goes on forever. It is, therefore,
not in pondering about ideas but in surveying ones inner life
and discovering the graveyard of needs and desires, once fer-
vently cherished, that we become intimately aware of the
temporality of existence.
Yet there is a curious ambiguity in the way in which this
awareness is entertained. For, even though there is nothing
man is more intimately sure of than the temporality of exis
tence, he is rarely resigned to the role of a mere undertaker of
desires.
W alking upon a rock that is constantly crumbling away be-
hind every step and anticipating the inevitable abruption that
will end his walk, man cannot restrain his bitter yearning to
know whether life is nothing but a series of momentary physi-
ological and mental processes, actions, and forms of behavior,
a flow of vicissitudes, desires, and sensations, running like
grains through an hourglass, marking time only once and al-
ways vanishing.
He wonders whether, at bottom, life is not like the face of
the sundial, outliving all shadows that rotate upon its surface.
Is life nothing but an agglomeration of facts, unrelated to one
anotherchos camouflaged by illusion ?
There is not a soul on this earth which, however vaguely or
rarely, has not realized that life is dismal unless mirrored in
something which is lasting. W e are all in search of a convic-
tion that there is something that is worth the toil of living.

62
There is not a soul which has not felt a craving to know of
something that outlasts life, strife, and agony.
Helpless and incongruous is man with all his craving, with
his tiny candles in the mist. Is it his will to be good that would
heal the wounds of his soul, his fright and frustration ? It is too
obvious that his will is a door to a house divided against itself,
that his good intentions, after enduring for a while, touch the
mud of vanity, like the horizon of his life which some day
will touch the grave. Is there anything beyond the horizon
of our good intentions ?
Despair, the sense of the futility of living, is an attitude,
the reality of which no psychologist will question. But just
as real is our fear of despair, our horror of futility. Human life
and despair seem to be incompatible. Man is a being in search
of signiicant being, of uldmate meaning of existence.
Ultimate meaning implies not only that man is part of a
whole, an adjunct to greatness, but an answer to a question,
the satisfaction of a need; not only that man is tolerated but
also that he is needed, precious, indispensable. Life is pre-
cious to man. Is it precious to man alone ?
The being of the being human is not the being of a neutral
fact, just being, but rather a relationship of human being
to meaning. Since being human is a necessity of human be
ing, a distinction must be made between two ways of reflec-
tion.
W ith other objects it is possible to reflect on their pure be
ing, unrelated to meaning, thrown into the world. W ith hu-
manity, it is impossible to reflect about its being without
regard to its meaning. W e can think of human being only
in terms of meaning: it is either devoid of, or indicative of,
ultimate meaning.

63
 Just as reasoning about and exploring the reality of the
world are inconceivable without being in the world, reflect-
ing about meaning is inconceivable without being involved
in meaning. W e are concerned because we are involved. Mean
ing, therefore, is more than a logical presupposition of our
reflection; it is meaning that drives us to think about meaning.
Reflecting about the infinite universe, we could perhaps af-
ford to resign ourselves to the trivial position of being a non-
entity. However, pondering over our reflection, we discover
that we are carried and surrounded by the mystery of mean
ing. Man is a fountain of immense meaning, not merely a
drop in the ocean of being.
The problem will not be solved by declaring our claim to
significant being to be a meaningless pretension, for the fact
of declaring that claim to be an empty pretension contains
a claim to meaning. The declaration itself claims to be sig
nificant thinking, and significant thinking is meaningless
without significant being. Asking any question, even, Is this
quest for meaning an empty pretension? presupposes the
meaningfulness of life and the value of the search for truth
to mans life.
The care for significant being is inherent in being human
it is strong, elementary, provocative, dwelling in every heart
whereas the tendency to question the claim to the possi-
bility of significant being is derivative. Important as its func-
tion is to unmask extravagant, absurd, or superstitious claims,
its power remains within the limits of reason. Its onslaught
can suppress or severely weaken but never destroy with its
weapon of reason a claim that surpasses reason. N o argument
will avail against the power of biological instincts; no skep-

64
ticism or cynicism can destroy a claim which has its roots in
the power of being human.
The quest for ultimate relevance of being is a response to
a requiredness of existence: not something derived from hu
man nature, but something that constitutes the nature of being
human. Truth would cease to be valuable if the quest for ulti
mate relevance of being human were irrelevant. If anxiety
about supreme significancethe driving force of all achieve-
ment in philosophy and artis to be considered an absurdity,
then to be human would mean to be mad. The question, how-
ever, would be: W hat is more deserving of being called mad,
the search for significance or the condemnation of such anxi
ety as madness? Would the soul of humanity be cured by
removing its cause and by declaring that the search for the
venerable is a misguided and absurd endeavor, that the quest
of meaning is meaningless, that the questions asked are irrel
evant ?
It is beyond the power of the mind to prove that being hu
man is a fact of undeniable validity. Man cannot verify his
humanity in terms that would transcend his existence. Indeed,
being human can only be grasped in human terms, and its
validity remains contingent upon the validity of human terms.
Man cannot prove transcendent meaning; he is a manifesta-
tion of transcendent meaning.
The human species is too powerful, too dangerous, to be
a mere toy or a freak. It undoubtedly represents something
unique in the great body of the universe: a growth, as it were,
an abnormal mass of tissue, which not only began to interact
with other parts but also, to some degree, was able to modify
their status. W hat is its nature and function ? Is it malignant,

65
a tumor, or is it supposed to serve as a brain of the uni verse ?
The human species shows at times symptoms of being
malignant and, if its growth remains unchecked, it may de-
stroy the entire body for the sake of its expansion. In terms of
astronomical time, our civilization is in its infancy. The ex
pansion of human power has hardly begun, and what man is
going to do with his power may either save or destroy our
planet.
T h e earth may be of small significance within the infinite
universe. But if it is of some significance, man holds the key
to it.
The relevance of human being depends upon the truth of
being human. The truth of being human discloses that man
is a being involved in a relationship to meaning, a relationship
rooted in the human situation, not the product of wishful
thinking.
The secret of being human is care for meaning. Man is
not his own meaning, and if the essence of being human is
concern for transcendent meaning, then mans secret lies in
openness to transcendence. Existence is interspersed with sug-
gestions of transcendence, and openness to transcendence is
a constitutive element of being human.
Such is the structure of our situation that human being
without an intuition of meaning cannot long remain a fact;
it soon stares us in the face as a nightmare.
Indeed, the concern for meaning of human being is what
constitutes the truth of being human. Its ontological relevance
is rooted in the very being of man, since human being devoid
of the possibility of being human is an absurdity. Our at-
tempts to formulate it are awkward, but the necessity to be
concerned for it is authentic.

66
Being and meaning
W e have defined mans quest for meaning as an effort to
understand the self (as well as humanity) in terms larger
than the self, as a striving to attain an inkling of ultimate
relevance of the human being. Man cannot be understood in
his own terms. He can only be understood, we repeat, in terms
of a larger context. Our problem, now, is: W hat is the context
of man, in terms of which he can be ultimately understood ?
Is human being to be understood as an aspect of anony-
mous, neutral Being ? Or is the human a mode of being which
seeks to surpass sheer being ? Is human being to be regarded
as an example of what is latently present in anonymous Being ?
Or is human being a breakthrough to what is meant by being ?
The quest of the meaning of being is a quest for that which
surpasses being, expressing insufficiency of sheer being. Mean
ing and being are, as said above, not coextensive. Meaning is
a primary category not reducible to being as such. There may
be meaning to that which is not yet, as there may be being
destructive of meaning. Just as we are aware of being and
of coming into being, we are aware o f meaning and of Corn
ing into meaning.
Existence does not receive its meaning from the realm of
being, because being-itself is less than being human. T h e hu
man is not derived from being; although it may vanish within
it.
The mandates and necessities of being do not exhaust the
depth of being human. M ans vocation is not acceptance of
being, but relating it to meaning; and his unique problem
is not how to come into being, but how to come into meaning.
The thirst, the quest, the homelessness breaking forth in
the fullness of being, is it not a cry for relatedness to what is

67
beyond being? l self-insufficiency is inherent in human be-
ing, is it not a sign that being as such is not the ultimate, all-
embracing category for the understanding of m an?
Human being is the cradle of mans coming into meaning,
and its preciousness remains the prerequisite of all values.
Y et sheer being does not generate goodness or beauty. Un-
guided, unfathered being may become vicious and uncouth.
It is only despair that claims: the task of man is to let the
world be. It is self-deception to assume that man can ever
be an innocent spectator. T o be human is to be involved, no-
lens volens, to act and to react, to wonder and to respond. For
man, to be is to play a part in a cosmic drama, knowingly or
unknowingly.

Being and living

In speaking about human being we have in mind a being
very much alive. Living is a situation, the content of which
is much richer than the concept of being. T h e term human
being is apt to suggest that the human is but a mode of being
in general, with the emphasis placed on being. Since the power
of a term easily determines the image of what we undertake
to explore, we must always keep in mind that it is the living
man we seek to understand when we speak of the human
being: human being as human living.
M ans most important problem is not being but living. T o
live means to be at the crossroads. There are many forces and
drives within the self. W hat direction to take P is a question
we face again and again.
W ho am I? A mere chip from the block of being? Am I
not both the chisel and the marble? Being and foreseeing?
Being and bringing into being?

68
 A more adequate formulation o f our problem would be in
asking: W hat is the context to which we must relate the liv
ing man ?
A major difference between ontological and biblical think-
ing is that the first seeks to relate the human being to a tran-
scendence called being as such, whereas the second, realizing
that human being is more than being, that human being is
living being, seeks to relate man to divine living, to a tran-
scendence called the living God.
The cardinal difference underlying these two approaches
is that the first, or ontological, approach accepts being as the
ultimate, whereas the biblical approach accepts living as the
ultimately real. T h e first seeks to understand living in terms
of being, the second seeks to understand being in terms of
living.
According to the second approach, we cannot solve the prob
lem of the ultimate context of man by positing being as such
as the ultimate, because this would be merely a verbal solu-
tion of the problem. T o man, whose chief attribute is life,
being deprived of life and purpose, mere inorganic subsis-
tence is in truth non-being.
The dilemma faced by the living man is whether the ulti
mate transcendence is alive or not alive. Making the option
for the ultimacy of being as being, the status of man as a living
being becomes precarious. If the ultimate is sheer being, the
human living has nothing to relate himself to as living. He
can only relate himself to nothing. W hat surrounds him is
a void where all life is left behind, where values and thoughts
are devoid of all relevance and reference. Facing being as be
ing, man discovers himself confronted by the Nothingness,
the possible impossibility of his existence. Man may see him-

69
self between thrownness at one end and death at the other
and so maintain: Out of Nothingness I came and into Noth-
ingncss I shall return. My existence draws its reality from
Nothing and is destined to be dissolved in Nothing.
The cardinal error is to take being for granted, to regard
being as ultimate, as absolute transcendence. Being as being
is vague, inconceivable, something not to be enclosed in any
mental concept. Yet, at least intellectually, we transcend be
ing, by questioning it, by asking: How is being possible?
Is being to be taken as the ultimate theme of thinking? The
fact that there is being at all is as puzzling as the question of
the origin of being. Any ontology that disregards the wonder
and mystery of being is guilty of suppressing the genuine
amazement of the mind, and of taking being for granted. It is
true that beings coming-into-being can neither be thought
nor uttered. Y et a fact does not cease to be fact because of
its transcending the limits of thought and expression. Indeed,
the very theme of ontology, being as being can neither be
thought nor uttered.
The acceptance of the ultimacy of being is a petitio pritt-
cipii; it mistakes a problem for a solution. T h e supreme and
ultimate issue is not being but the mystery of being. W hy is
there being at all instead of nothing? W e can never think of
any being without conceiving the possibility of its not being.
W e are always exposed to the presence as well as to the ab-
sence of being. Thus, what we face is a pair of concepts rather
than one ultimate concept. Both concepts are transcended by
the mystery of being.
The biblical man does not begin with being, but with the
surprise of being. T h e biblical man is free of what may be

70
called the ontocentric predicament. Being is not all to him.
He is not enchanted by the given, granting the alternative,
namely, the annihilation of the given. T o Parmenides, not-
being is inconceivable ( Nothingness is not possible) ; to the
biblical mind, nothingness or the end of being is not impos
sible. Realizing the contingency of being, it could never iden-
tify being with ultimate reality. Being is neither self-evident
nor self-explanatory. Being points to the question of how
being is possible. The act of bringing being into being, crea-
tion, stands higher in the ladder of problems than being.
Creation is not a transparent concept. But is the concept of
being as being distinguished by lucidity ? Creation is a mys-
tery; being as being an abstraction.
The mind dares to go behind being in asking about the
source of being. It is true that the concept of that source
implies being, yet it is also true that a Being that calls a reality
into being is endowed with the kind of being that transcends
mysteriously all conceivable being. Thus, whereas ontology
asks about being as being, theology asks about being as crea
tion, about being as a divine act. From the perspective of con-
tinuous creation, there is no being as being; there is only
continuous coming-into-being. Being is both action and
event.*
T h e universe, Being itself, cannot offer an answer to the
question of the meaning of the universe, or the meaning of
being, since the question seeks to assess being in terms other
than being, in terms exceeding the universe. The question
refers to transcendence of being; it affirms what is beyond,

* See A. J. Heschel, T he Prophets (New York, 1962), pp. 263.

71
over, and above being. In asking it, we leave the levei of logi-
cal and strictly verifiable thinking and climb to the levei of
mystery. Such a step is one which logically we must not take;
it transcends the boundaries of legitimate logic. Y et in spite
of all warnings insisting and proving that the question is
meaningless, man will never cease to raise it. T h e question
affirms its own vaUdity. Science cannot silence him, the power
of logic cannot permanently suppress it. Indeed, in giving up
the anxiety for meaning, man would cease to be hum an; logi-
cal positivisms gain would be humanitys loss.
There are many reasons against the search for meaning,
yet just as no theory about the harmfulness of breathing will
cause man to abstain from breathing, no theory about irrele-
vance of the question of meaning w ill eradicate mans con-
cern for it.

Who is man s meaning?

W e have questioned the adequacy of the formulation,
W hat is man ? But should we not equally attack the form
ulation, W hat is the meaning of human being? as a will-
ful reduction of the meaning of being a person to a thing or
an idea ? T h e very formulation W hat is the meaning o f . . .
is obviously not derived from the realm of thinghood, and as
such excludes from the beginning the possibility of finding
an answer in the realm of thinghood. Our ideas of hot and
cold are abstracted from experiences in the realm of things.
T h e meaning of human being, however, is not a property
like hot and cold which can be experienced through sense
perception. Nor is an answer to be found in abstractions or
Platonic ideas, since the problem we are concerned with arises
out of the full situation of the living man, embracing the dy-

72
namics and concrete reality of his individual existence, in-
cluding the ultimate relevance of his thinking as well as the
ideas and abstractions he comprehends.
On the other hand, to assume that the meaning we are in
search of, namely, the meaning of being a person, is in the
realm of personhood would be a tautology. The difficulty,
then, lies in the fact that only two realms are accessible to
us, thinghood and personhood, and what we are in search
of either seems to be a figment of the imagination or is to
be found in, belongs to, or is another realm.
Ultimate meaning as an idea is no answer to our anxiety.
Humanity is more than an intellectual structure; it is a per-
sonal reality. T h e cry for meaning is a cry for ultimate rela-
tionship, for ultimate belonging. It is a cry in which all
pretensions are abandoned. Are we alone in the wilderness of
time, alone in the dreadfully marvelous universe, of which
we are a part and where we feel forever like strangers? Is
there a Presence to live by ? A Presence worth living for, worth
dying for ? Is there a way of living in the Presence ? Is there
a way of living compatible with the Presence ?
As said above, the universe does not reveal its secret to us,
and what it says is not expressed in the language of man. The
ultimate meaning of man is not to be derived from ultimate
being. Ultimate being is devoid of any relationship to par
ticular beings, and unless meaning is related to me, I am not
related to meaning.
Man is in need of meaning, but if ultimate meaning is not
in need of man, and he cannot relate himself to it, then ulti
mate meaning is meaningless to him. As a one-sided relation
ship, as a reaching-out or searching-for, the meeting of man
and meaning would remain a goal beyond mans reach.

73
Meaning in quest of man
T h e Greeks formulated the search of meaning as man in
search of a thought; the Hebrews formulated the search of
meaning as Gods thought (or concern) in search of man. The
meaning of existence is not naturally given; it is not an en-
dowment but an art. It rather depends on whether we re-
spond or refuse to respond to God who is in search of m an;
it is either fulfilled or missed.
M ans anxiety about meaning is not a question, an impulse,
but an answer, a response to a challenge.
T h e Bible maintains that the question about God is a ques
tion of God. If the Lord did not ask the question, in vain
would be the labor of those who deal with it. Man is being
called upon, challenged, and solaced. God is in search of
man, and life is something that requires an answer. History
is above all a question, a fathoming, a probing, a testing.
The primary topic, then, of biblical thinking is not mans
knowledge of God but rather mans being known by God,
mans being an object of divine knowledge and concern. This
is why the great puzzle was: W hy should God, the Creator
of heaven and earth, be concerned with m an? W hy should
the deeds of puny man be relevant enough to affect the life
of God ?
Can a man be profitable unto God?
Or can he that is wise be profitable unto Him ?
Is it any advantage to the Almighty, that thou art righteous?
Or is it gain to Him, that thou makest thy ways blameless?
Job 22:2-3

God takes man seriously. He enters a direct relationship

with man, namely, a covenant, to which not only man but
also God is committed. In his ultimate confrontation and cri

74
ses the biblical man knows not only Gods cternal mercy and
justice but also Gods commitment to man. Upon this sub
lime fact rests the meaning of history and the glory of hu-
man destiny.
Essential to biblical religion is the awareness of Gods in-
terest in man, the awareness of a covenant, of a responsibility
that lies on Him as well as on us. Our task is to concur with
His interest, to carry out His vision of our task. God is in
need of man for the attainment of His ends, and religion, as
biblical tradition understands it, is a way of serving these
ends, of which we are in need, even though we may not be
aware of them, ends which we must learn to feel the need of.
Life is a partnership of God and m an; God is not detached
from or indifferent to our joys and griefs. Authentic vital
needs of mans body and soul are a divine concern. T his is
why human life is holy. God is a partner and a partisan in
mans struggle for justice, peace, love, and beauty, and it is
because of His being in need of man that He entered a cove
nant with him for all time, a mutual bond embracing God
and man, a relationship to which God, not alone man, is
committed.

Meaning beyond the mystery

Ever since Schleiermacher it has been customary in con-
sidering the nature of religion to start with the human self
and to characterize religion as a feeling of dependence, rev-
erence, etc. W hat is overlooked is the unique aspect of reli-
gious consciousness of being a recipient, of being exposed,
overwhelmed by a presence which surpasses our ability to feel.
W hat characterizes the religious man is faith in Gods transi-
tive concern for humanity, faith in Gods commitment to

75
man, in terms of which he seeks to shape his life and attempts
to find sense in history.
Facing the world must not be equated with passivity or
surrender. It means not to mistake the perceptible for the un-
utterable. It means being in touch with sheer being.
The world is not related to us, and there is a whole realm
in the inner life of man which is not related to the world.
Man and the world have a mystery in common: the mystery
of being dependent upon meaning, which is not simply given
in sheer being.
W hat we produce has meaning in relation to us who pro-
duce it. It is the sheer being of the universe that calls forth
the question about meaning. It is in conjunction with the
universe that the ultimate question is evolved.
The tragedy of modern man is that he thinks alone. He
broods about his own affairs rather than thinking for all being.
He has moved out of the realm of Gods creation into the
realm of mans manipulation.
This seems to be the malady of m an: His normal conscious-
ness is a state of oblivion, a State of suspended sensitivity.
As a result, we see only camouflage and concealment. W e
do not understand what we do; we do not see what we face.
Is there a meaning beyond all conventional meanings P T h e
Greeks discovered rational structure of the given, yet beyond
the given and the rational they sensed dark mysteryirra-
tional fate or necessity that stood over and above men and
gods, a mysterious power which filled even Zeus with fear.
W e are so impressed by our intellectual power that we deny
any presence lying beyond our power. W hat we define is;
what we cannot define is not and cannot be.
T o the biblical man was given the understanding that be-

76
yond all mystery is meaning. God is neither plain meaning
nor just mystery. God is meaning that transcends mystery,
meaning that mystery alludes to, meaning that speaks through
mystery.
The mystery is not a synonym for the unknown, but rather
a term for a meaning which stands in relation to God.
Being is a mystery, being is concealment, but there is mean
ing beyond the mystery. The meaning beyond the mystery
seeks to come to expression. The destiny of human being is
to articulate what is concealed. The divine seeks to be dis-
closed in the human.
Silence hovers over all the mountain peaks. T h e world is
aflame with grandeur. Each flower is an outpouring of love.
Each being speaks for itself. Man alone can speak for all be-
ings. Human living alone enacts the mystery as a drama.

Transcendent meaning
The awareness of transcendent meaning comes with the
st.ise of the ineffable. T h e imperative o f awe is its certificate
of evidence, a universal response which we experience not be-
cause we desire to, but because we are stunned and cannot
brave the impact of the sublime. It is a meaning wrapped in
mystery.
It is not by analogy or inference that we become aware of
it. It is rather sensed as something immediately given, ogi-
cally and psychologically prior to judgment, to the assimila-
tion of subject matter to mental categories; a universal insight
into an objective aspect of reality, of which all men are at all
times capable; not the froth of ignorance but the climax of
thought, indigenous to the climate that prevails at the sum-
m it of intellectual endeavor.

77
 It is a cognitive insight, since the awareness it evokes adds
to our deeper understanding of the world.
Transcendent meaning is a meaning that surpasses our com-
prehension. A finite meaning that would fit perfectly our cat-
egories would not be an ultimate explanation, since it would
still call for further explanation and would be an answer
unrelated to our ultimate question. A finite meaning that
claims to be an ultimate answer is specious. The assumption,
for example, that the pursuit of knowledge, the enjoyment
of beauty, or sheer being is an end in itself, is a principie we
may utter, not a truth man can live by. Tell man that he is
an end in himself, and his answer will be despair. The finite
has beauty but no grandeur; it may be pleasing but not re-
deeming.
Finite meaning is a thought we comprehend; infinite mean
ing is a thought that comprehends us; finite meaning we ab-
sorb; infinite meaning we encounter. Finite meaning has
clarity; infinite meaning has depth. Finite meaning we com
prehend with analytical reason; to infinite meaning we re-
spond in awe. Infinite meaning is uncomfortable, not com-
patible with our categories. It is not to be grasped as though
it were something in the world which appeared before us.
Rather it is that in which the world appears to us. It is not
an objectnot a self-subsistent, timeless idea or value; it is
a presence.
There is no insight into transcendent meaning without the
premise of wonder and the premise of awe. W e say premise
because wonder and awe are not emotions, but are cognitive
acts involving value judgments.
The sense of wonder is not the mist in our eyes or the fog
in our words. Wonder, or radical amazement, is a way of

78
going beyond what is given in thing and thought, refusing
to take anything for granted, to regard anything as final. It
is our honest response to the grandeur and mystery of reality,
our confrontation with that which transcends the given.
It would be a contradiction in terms to assume that the
attainment of transcendent meaning consists in comprehend-
ing a notion. Transcendence can never be an object of pos-
session or of comprehension. Yet man can relate himself and
be engaged to it. He must know how to court meaning in
order to be engaged to it. Love of ultimate meaning is not
self-centered but rather a concern to transcend the self. More-
over, ideas, formulas, or doctrines are generalities, impersonal,
timeless, and as such they remain incongruous with the essen-
tial mode of human existence which is concrete, personal,
here and now. Transcendent meaning must not be reduced
to an object of acknowledgment, to saying yes to an idea.
The experience of a meaning is an experience of vital involve-
ment, not having an idea in mind but living within a spirit
surpassing the m ind; not an experience of a private reference
of meaning, but sharing a dimension open to all human be-
ings. W e meet in a stillness of significance, disclosing a fel-
lowship of being related to a concern for meaning. T h e long-
ing for such experience is part of mans ultimate vocation. In
this longing, he acts, it seems, for all men. Any meaning,
therefore, relevant only to one man is no answer to any man.
The relationship of a human being to ultimate meaning can
never be conceived as possession.
Ultimate meaning is not grasped once and for all in the
form of a timeless idea, acquired once and for all, securely
preserved in conviction. It is not simply given. It comes upon
us as an intimation that comes and goes. W hat is left behind

79
is a memory, and a commitment to that mcmory. Our words
do not describe it, our tools do not wield it. But sometimes it
seems as if our very being were its description, its secret tool.
T h e anchor of meaning resides in an abyss, deeper than the
reach of despair. Yet the abyss is not infinite; its bottom may
suddenly be discovered within the confines of a human heart
or under the debris of mighty doubts.
This may be the vocation of m an: to say Amen to being
and to the Author of being; to li ve in defiance of absurdity,
notwithstanding futility and defeat; to attain faith in God
even in spite of God.

8o
 Chapter five

Manipulation and appreciation

The sense of meaning is not born in ease and sloth. It comes
after bitter trials, disappointments in the glitters, founderings,
strandings. It is the marrow from the bone. There is no manna
in our wilderness.
Thought is not bred apart from experience or from inner
surroundings. Thinking is living, and no thought is bred in
an isolated cell in the brain. N o thought is an island.
W e think with all faculties; our entire living is involved in
our thinking. Thus our way of thinking is affected by our
way of living, and contemplation is the distillation of ones
entire existence. Thinking is a summing up of the truth of our
own living.
T h e manner in which I relate myself to the being of this
pen, paper, and desk affects my way of reflecting on ultimate
issues.
Ultimately there is no power to narcissistic, self-indulgent
thinking. Authentic thinking originates in an encounter with
the world. W e think not only in concepts; we think in the
world. T hinking echoes mans total relationship to the world.
Human being is both being in the world and living in the
world. Living involves responsible understanding of ones role

81
in relation to all other beings. For living is not being in itself,
by itself, but living off the world, affecting, exploiting, con-
suming, comprehending, deriving, depriving.
How does man identify or regard the world ? W hat is the
face of the world in the eyes of m an? How does he relate
himself to the world ?
There are two primary ways in which man relates himself
to the world that surrounds him : manipulation and appreci-
ation. In the first way he sees in what surrounds him things
to be handled, forces to be managed, objects to be put to use.
In the second way he sees in what surrounds him things to be
acknowledged, understood, valued or admired.
It is the hand that creates the tools for the purpose of ma
nipulation ( manus means hand), and it is the ear and the eye
by which we attain appreciation. Following the example of
the hand, sight, hearing, and particularly speech, become
tools of manipulation. Man begins to use his ear and his eye
in order to exploit; his words become tools.
Fellowship depends upon appreciation, while manipulation
is the cause of alienation: objects and I apart, things stand
dead, and I am alone. W hat is more decisive: a life of ma
nipulation distorts the image of the world. Reality is equated
with availability: what I can manipulate is, what I cannot
manipulate is not. A life of manipulation is the death of tran-
scendence.
A premise of significant being is full and grateful accep-
tance of ones own being. Perceptions, moments of insight,
the privilege of being present at the unfolding of time-who
has the right to ask for more ?
Acceptance is appreciation, and the high value of appreci
ation is such that to appreciate appreciation seems to be the

82
fundamental prerequisite for survival. Mankind will not die
for lack of inform ation; it may perish for lack of appreciation.
Biblical religion is in a sense rebellion against the tyranny
of things, a revolt against confinement in the world. Man is
given the choice of being lost in the world or of being a part-
ner in mastering and redeeming the world.
Man is from the beginning not submerged in nature nor
totally derived from it. He must not surrender to the imper-
sonal, to the earth, to being as such. Surrendering, he gradu-
ally obliterates himself. Turning beast, he becomes a can-
nibal. He is not simply in nature. He is free and capable of
rising above nature, of conquering and controlling it. In the
Prometheus myth man steals fire against the will of the gods;
in the Bible man has the divine mandate to rise above nature.
In this spirit, it is said in a Midrash that God taught Adam
the art of making fire.
According to the Bible, the conquest of nature is a means
to an end; mans mastery is a privilege that must be neither
misunderstood nor abused.

Disavoiml of transcenence
Prior to the discovery of natures submissiveness to the
power of man, man is clearly aware that nature does not be-
long to him. The awareness of natures otherness precedes the
awareness of natures availability. However, as a result of let-
ting the drive for power dominate existence, man is bound to
lose his sense for natures otherness. Nature becomes a utensil,
an object to be used. The world ceases to be that which is and
becomes that which is available.
It is a submissive world that modern man is in the habit of
sensing, and he seems content with the riches of thinghood.

83
Space is the limit of his ambitions, and there is little he de-
sires besides it. Correspondingly, mans consciousness recedes
more and more in the process of reducing his status to that
of a consumer and manipulator. H e has enclosed himself in
the availability of things, with the shutters down and no sight
of what is beyond availability.
His way of thinking tends to flatten things. He deals with
th em as if they had no depth, as if the world had only two
dimensions. He has developed a sense of power, a sense of
beauty; he knows how to use the forces of matter, how to
enjoy the beauty of nature. Intellectually he knows that the
universe is not here for his sake; not here to please his ego.
Practically, however, he acts as if the purpose of the universe
were to satisfy his needs.
Exclusive manipulation results in the dissolution of aware-
ness of all transcendence. Promise becomes a pretext, God be-
comes a symbol, truth a fiction, loyalty tentative, the holy a
mere convention. Mans very existence devours all transcen
dence. Instead of facing the grandeur of the cosmos, he ex-
plains it away; instead of beholding, he takes a picture; in
stead of hearing a voice, he tapes it. He does not see what he
is able to face.
There is a suspension of mans sense of the hly. His mind
is becoming a wall instead of being a door open to what is
larger than the scope of his comprehension. He locks himself
out of the world by reducing all reality to mere things and
all relationship to mere manipulation.
Transcendence is not an article of faith. It is what we come
upon immediately when standing face to face with reality.
For the world of stable objects which we seek to explore

84
and to control is not all of reality. T h e perceptibility of things
is not the end of their being. Their surface is available to our
tools, their depth is immune to our inquisitiveness.
Things are both available and immune. W e penetrate their
physical givenness, we cannot intuit their secret. W e measure
what they exhibit, we know how they function, but we also
know that we do not know what they are, what they stand
for, what they imply. A tree we describe as a woody perennial
plant having a single main axis or stem (trunk) commonly
exceeding ten feet in height. Is that all there is in the tree I
face ?

Existence and expediency

Man is naturally self-centered, and he is inclined to regard
expediency as the supreme standard for what is right and
wrong. However, we must not convert an indination into an
axiom that just as mans perceptions cannot operate outside
time and space, so his motivations cannot operate outside ex
pediency; that man can never transcend his own self. T h e
most fatal trap into which thinking may fali is the equation
of existence and expediency.
Ultimate reliance on the self-regulating force of class and
national interests, the Golden Calf of the modem age, is wish-
ful thinking. W ho is wise enough to know what his true in
terests are ? Does not the clash of interests that ends in war
and mutual extermination prove the folly of ultimate reliance
on expediency ?
The supremacy of expediency is being refuted by time and
truth. Tim e is an essential dimension of existence defiant of
mans power, and truth reigns in supreme majesty, unrivaled,

85
inimitable, and can never be defeated. Man cannot fabricate
it but only submit to it. Anteceding man, truth is a prefigura-
tion of transcendence.
Expediency as an absolute is a circle in which man is easily
trapped. W here expediency is the limit, existing becomes a
cul-de-sac. Authentic existence involves exaltation, sensitivity
to the holy, awareness of indebtedness.
Existence without transcendence is a way of living where
things become idols and idols become monsters.
Denial of transcendence contradicts the essential truth of
being human. Its root can be traced either to stolidity of self-
contentment or to superciliousness of contempt, to moods
rather than to comprehensive awareness of the totality and
mystery of being.
Denial of transcendence which claims to unveil the truth
of being is an inner contradiction, since the truth of being is
not within being or within our consciousness of being but
rather a truth that transcends our being.
Essential to education for being human is to cultivate a sense
for the inexpedient, to disclose the fallacy of absolute expedi
ency. Gods voice may sound feeble to our conscience. Yet
there is a divine cunning in history which seems to prove that
the wages of absolute expediency is disaster.
Happiness is not a synonym for self-satisfaction, compla-
cency, or smugness. Self-satisfaction breeds futility and de-
spair. Self-satisfaction is the opiate of fools.
Self-fulfillment is a myth which a noble mind must find
degrading. All that is Creative in man stems from a seed of
endless discontent. New insight begins when satisfaction
comes to an end, when all that has been seen, said, or done
looks like a distortion.

86
 The aim is the maintenance and fanning of a discontent
with onr aspirations and achievements, the maintenance and
fanning of a craving that knows no satisfaction. Mans true
fulfillment depends upon communion with that which tran-
scends him.
W e are involved in a paradox. Discontent is a feeling of
uneasiness which we should seek to overcome. Yet to eradi-
cate discontent is to turn man into a machine. Let us imagine
a State in which all goals have been achieveddisease over
come, poverty eliminated, longevity achieved, urban commu-
nities established on Mars and other planets, the moon made
a part of our empire. W ill bliss have been achieved?
In this world, said Oscar Wilde, there are only two trage-
dies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is get-
ting it. The last is the real tragedy.

The sense of the ineffable

In our reflection we must go back to where we stand in awe
before sheer being, facing the marvel of the moment. The
world is not just here. It shocks us into amazement.
O f being itself all we can positively say is: being is ineffable.
The heart of being confronts me as enigmatic, incompatible
with my categories, sheer mystery. My power of probing is
easily exhausted, my words fade, but what I sense is not empti-
ness but inexhaustible abundance, ineffable abundance. W hat
I face I cannot utter or phrase in language. But the richness
of my facing the abundance of being endows me with mar-
velous reward: a sense of the ineffable.
Being as we know it, the world as we come upon it, stands
before us as otherness, remoteness. For all our efforts to ex-

87
ploit or comprehend it, it rcmains evasive, mysteriously im-
mune. Being is unbelievable.
Our concern with environment cannot be reduced to what
can be used, to what can be grasped. Environment indudes
not only the inkstand and the blotting paper, but also the
impenetrable stillness in the air, the stars, the clouds, the quiet
passing of time, the wonder of my own being. I am an end
as well as a means, and so is the world: an end as well as a
means. My view of the world and my understanding of the
self determine each other. The complete manipulation of the
world results in the complete instrumentalization of the self.
The world presents itself in two ways to me. The world as
a thing I own, the world as a mystery I face. W hat I own is
a trifle, what I face is sublime. I am careful not to waste what
I own; I must learn not to miss what I face.
W e manipulate what is available on the surface of the
world; we must also stand in awe before the mystery of the
world. W e objectify Being but we also are present at Being
in wonder, in radical amazement.
All we have is a sense of awe and radical amazement in the
face of a mystery that staggers our ability to sense it.
No one can ridicule the stars, or poke fun at an atomic ex-
plosion. No one can debunk the man who committed suicide
in order to call the attention of the world to the Nazi atroci-
ties.
Awe is more than an emotion; it is a way of understand
ing, insight into a meaning greater than ourselves. T h e be-
ginning of awe is wonder, and the beginning of wisdom is
awe.
Awe is an intuition for the dignity of all things, a realiza-
tion that things not only are what they are but also stand,

88
however remotely, for something supreme. Awe is a sense for
the transcendence, for the reference everywhere to mystery
beyond all things. It enables us to perceive in the world inti-
mations of the divine, to sense in small things the beginning
of infinite significance, to sense the ultimate in the common
and the simple; to feel in the rush of the passing the stillness
of the eternal. W hat we cannot comprehend by analysis, we
become aware of in awe.
Faith is not belief, an assent to a proposition; faith is attach-
ment to transcendence, to the meaning beyond the mystery.
Knowledge is fostered by curiosity; wisdom is fostered by
awe. Awe precedes faith; it is the root of faith. W e must be
guided by awe to be worthy of faith.
Forfeit your sense of awe, let your conceit diminish your
ability to revere, and the universe becomes a market place for
you. The loss of awe is the avoidance of insight. A return to
reverence is the first prerequisite for a revival of wisdom, for
the discovery of the world as an allusion to God.

Presence
In his great vision Isaiah perceives the voice of the seraphim
even before he hears the voice of the Lord. W hat is it that the
seraphim reveal? Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the
whole earth is full of His glory.
Holy, holy, holyindicate the transcendence and distance
of God. The whole earth is full of this glorythe immanence
or presence of God. The outwardness of the world communi-
cates something of the indwelling greatness of God.
The glory is neither an aesthetic nor a physical quality. It is
sensed in grandeur, but it is more than grandeur. It is a pres
ence or the effulgence of a presence.
89
 The whole earth is full of His glory, but we do not perceive
i t ; it is within our reach but beyond our grasp. And still it is
not entirely unknown to us.
In English the phrase that a person has a presence is hard
to define. There are people whose being here and now is felt,
even though they do not display themselves in action and
speech. They have presence. Other people may be here all
the time, but no one will be aware of their presence. O f a per
son whose outwardness communicates something of his in-
dwelling power or greatness, whose soul is radiant and con-
veys itself without words, we say he has presence.
Standing face to face with the world, we often sense a pres
ence which surpasses our ability to comprehend. T h e world is
too much for us. It is crammed with marvel. There is a glory,
an aura, that lies about all beings, a spiritual setting of reality.
T o the religious man it is as if things stood with their backs
to him, their faces turned to God, as if the glory of things con-
sisted in their being an object of divine care.
Being is both presence and absence. God had to conceal
His presence in order to bring the world into being. He had
to make His absence possible in order to make room for the
worlds presence. Corning into being brought along denial
and defiance, absence, oblivion, and resistance.

Pathos
By being we mean continuance in time, duration. W hen we
say it is, we mean it persists. Persistence is due to the
power of being. Thus being is made possible by something the
meaning of which extends beyond the concept of being. Being
points beyond itself.
Accustomed as we are to think in terms of space, the ex-

90
pression being points beyond itself may bc taken to denote
a higher levei in space. W hat is meant, however, is a higher
category than being: the power of maintaining being.
W hy does being continue to be ? Any answer offered would
add a concept indispensable to being, thus making it impos
sible to regard being as the one and only supreme concept.
Being is either open to, or dependent on, what is more than
being, namely, the care for being, or it is a cul-de-sac, to be
explained in terms of self-sufficiency. The weakness of the
first possibility is in its reference to a mystery; the weakness
of the second possibility is in its pretension to offer a rational
explanation.
Nature, the sum of its laws, may be sufficient to explain in
its own terms how facts behave within nature; it does not ex
plain why they behave at all. Some tacit assumptions of the
theory of insufEciency remain problematic.
How does one explain explanation? Is not self-sufficiency
of nature a greater puzzle, transcending all explanations, than
the idea of natures being dependent on what surpasses na
ture ? The idea of dependence is an explanation, whereas self-
sufficiency is an unprecedented, nonanalogous concept in
terms of what we know about life within nature. Is not self-
sufficiency itself insufficient to explain self-sufficiency?
Being would cease to be if its duration were a matter of
indifference to the power of being. Duration of being pre-
supposes concern for being. Being is transcended by a con-
cern for being.
Our perplexity will not be solved by relating human exis-
tence to a timeless, subpersonal abstraction which we call
essence. W e can do justice to human being only by relating
it to the transcendent care for being.

9i
 T h e ultimate problem is not being, but concern for being.
W hat precedes being is not nothingness, but rather concern
for being; logos as well as pathos.
God is not reducible to being. He is God as One W ho brings
others into being, as One W ho cares for other beings.
There is a care that hovers over being. Being is surpassed
by concern for being. Being would cease to be were it not for
Gods care for Being.
W hat accounts for being ? Pathos, a transcendent, transitive
concern. The locus of moral values is in a setting defined by
the presence of a transcendent concern. Life is tridimensional;
every act can be evaluated by two coordinate axes, in which
the abscissa is man, the ordinate is God.

The most important decision a thinker makes is reflected

in what he comes to consider the most important problem.
According to Albert Camus, There is only one really serious
philosophical problem: and that is suicide. May I differ and
suggest that there is only one really serious problem: and that
is martyrdom. Is there anything worth dying for ?
W e can only live the truth if we ha ve the power to die for
it. Suicide is escape from evil and surrender to absurdity. A
martyr is a witness to the holy in spite of evil absurdity.
Nietzsches formula for the greatness of a human being is
amor fati. Jewish tradition would suggest as the formula for
the greatness of man his capacity for \iddush hashem, readi-
ness to die for the sake of God, for the sake of the Name.
And yet, even though Gods creation retains precedence
over mans corruption, man has the power to convert blessing
into curse, to use being for undoing, to turn the elixir of Gods
word to deadly poison. His power of corruption may again

92
and again, temporarily, for long stretches of history, destroy
what God designs. However, mans willfulness is not the ulti-
mate force in history. W e are involved in a drama dependent
upon the polarity of creation and corruption. Just as creation
goes on all the time, redemption goes on all the time. A t the
end, we believe, Gods care defeats mans defiance.
God and the world are not opposite poles. There is dark-
ness in the world, but there is also this call, Let there be
light! Nor are body and soul at loggerheads. W e are not told
to decide between EitherOr, either God or the world,
either this world or the world to come. W e are told to accept
Either and Or, God and the world. It is upon us to strive for
a share in the world to come, as well as to let God have a
share in this world.

93
 Chapter six

H ow to live
Modem thinking has often lost its way by separating the
problem of truth from the problem of living, cognition from
mans total situation. Such separation has resulted in rea-
sons isolationism, in utopian and irrelevant conceptions of
man. Reflection alone will not procure self-understanding.
The human situation is disclosed in the thick of living. The
deed is the distillation of the self. W e can display no initia-
tive, no freedom in sheer being; our responsibility is in living.
W here does man come upon himself most directly ? Is it in
abstract self-consciousness, in the generality of knowing that
I am, of knowing that I think ? Man encounters himself,
he is surprised to know himself, in the words he utters, in the
deeds he does, and above all in living as an answer.
It is living rather than sheer being that comes close to mans
realness. Being may be applied to a dead horse, but it is the
living man we are concerned with. Indeed, the categories
used in describing both human being and being human are
all the fruits of living.
As sheer being man dissolves in anonymity. But man is not
only being, he is also living, and if he were simply to sur-

94
render to being, as Heidegger calls upon us to do, he would
abdicate his power to decide and reduce his living to being.
T o be is both passive and intransitive. In living, man relates
himself actively to the world. Deeds are the language of liv
ing, articulating the uniqueness of human being, the insights
of being human.
The decisive form of human being is human living. Thus
the proper theme for the study of man is the problem of liv
ing, of what to do with being. Living means putting being
into shape, lending form to sheer being.
Human living is exceedingly common, exceedingly trite.
The repetitiousness of doing, the stereotypes of speaking, de-
prive us of the dignity of living. Our ability to lend form to
our being depends upon our understanding of the singularity
of human living.
There is no guarantee or assurance of attaining significant
being. It is a mistake to assume that significant being is
achieved unwittingly, to let hours go on in order to arrive at
the goals of living. Life is a battle for meaning which may be
lost or won, totally or partially. W hat is at stake may be
gambled away.
The root of creativity is discontent with mere being, with
just being around in the world. Man is challenged not to sur-
render to mere being. Being is to be surpassed by living. The
problem is how to live my being explicitly. Being human is
living-in-the-world.
Insufficiency of mere being drives man to more-than-being,
to bring into being, to come into meaning. W e transcend
being by bringing into beingthoughts, things, offspring,
deeds.
If m ans quest for supreme meaning is valid and required

95
by the truth of being human, and if that quest can only go
on by relating oneself to transcendent meaning, then we must
affirm the validity and requiredness of mans relating himself
to transcendent meaning.
Mans plight, as said above, is not due to the fear of non-
being, to the fear of death, but to the fear of living, because
all living is branded with the unerasable shock at absurdity,
cruelty, and callousness experienced in the past. A human
being is a being in fear of pain, in fear of being put to shame.
Anguish is partly rooted in being human and partly due to
misconceptions about ones own being as well as to social in-
compatibilities. The fear of living arises most commonly out
of experiences of failure or insult, of having gone astray or
having been rebuffed. It is rooted not in being but in the liv
ing of our being, in the encounter with other human beings,
in not knowing how to be with other beings, in the inability
or refusal to communicate, but above all in the failure to live
in complete involvement with what transcends our living.
Our failure is due to our regarding the realm of values as
a superstructure of existence, deriving the ought from the
is, norms from facts, spirit from nature, requirement
from measurement.
Human being shares the being of all beings, just as cham-
pagne and shoe polish, cheesecake and pebbles. Being human,
however, cannot be classified or placed in the series of other
beings. Being human, as said above, is an act not a thing. Its
chief characteristic is not being but what is done with being.
Being human is the humanization of being, the transmuta-
tion of mute givenness. By being human man exceeds sheer
being. Being is anonymous, silent. Humanization is articula-
tion of meaning inherent in being.

96
 In the ground of our being the awareness of participating
in being does not offer any ultimate firmness. W hat drives us
on mysteriously is the experience of being as an answer, an
exclamation.

To be is to obey
Heideggers rhetorical question, Has the Dasein, as such,
ever freely decided and will it ever be able to decide as to
whether to come into existence or not? has been answered
longago: It is against your will that you are born, it is against
your will that you live, and it is against your will that you
are bound to give account___ The transcendence of human
being is disclosed here as life imposed upon, as imposition to
give account, as imposition of freedom. The transcendence of
being is commandment, being here and now is obedience.
I have not brought my being into being. Nor was I thrown
into being. My being is obeying the saying Let there be!
Commandment and expectation lie dormant in the recesses
of being and come to light in the consciousness of being hu
man. W hat Adam hears first is a command.
Against the conception of the world as something just here,
the Bible insists that the world is creation. Over all being
stand the words: Let there be! And there was, and there is.
T o be is to obey the commandment of creation. Gods word
is at stake in being. There is a cosmic piety in sheer being.
W hat is endures as a response to a command.
Philosophically the primacy of creation over being means
that the ought precedes the is. The order of things goes
back to an order of God.
Even evading metaphysical reflection about the ultimate

97
source of being, an individual will confess that being does
not come about as a result of a will to be, since this would pre-
suppose the being of a will. My own existence is not the result
of my will to exist. A t one moment my life carne about, and
it is a mysterious loyalty within my substance that keeps me
in being.
Mans will to be cannot be separated from his ought to be.
Human being completely independent of norm is a figment
of the imagination.
T h e loss of the sense of significant being is due to the loss
of the commandment of being. Being is obedience, a response.
Thou art precedes I am. I am because I am called upon
to be.
Being, as said above, is not the only dimension in which
human existence finds itself. Characteristic of human exis
tence is the mutual involvement of being and meaning.
W hat I suggest is not that first there is neutral being and
then values. Being created implies being born in value, being
endowed with meaning, receiving value. Living involves ac-
ceptance of meaning, obedience, and commitment.

Continuity
A person is responsible for what he is, not only for what he
does. The primary problem is not how to endow particular
deeds with meaning but rather how to live ones total being,
how to shape ones total existence as a pattern of meaning.
Is there a possibility of facing human existence as a whole
from infancy to old age, or is man capable of living only in
fractions, of going through moments unrelated to one an-
other ?
T h e problem of living may be defined as a problem of rec-

98
onciliation, of bringing about a modus vivendi for the self in
rclation to all that is, in the midst of which, and in relation
to which, he exists; of coordinating the forces that operate in
the domain of inner life.
Character education will remain ineffective if it is limited
to the teaching of norms and principies. T h e concern must be
not to instill timeless ideas but to cultivate the concrete per-
son. Life is clay, and character is form. How to lend shape,
to bring order into the complexity of my inner and outer life ?
How to coordinate impulses, drives, ambitions ? How to sim-
plify the self? The goal is to lend shape to existence, to en-
dow all of life with form.
Right living is like a work of art, the product of a vision
and of a wrestling with concrete situations.
W e cannot, on the other hand, analyze man as a being only
here and now. Not only here, because his situation is inten-
tional with the situation of other men scattered far and wide
all over the world. Not only now, because his total existence
is, in a sense, a summation of past generations, a distillation
of experiences and thoughts of his ancestors.
The authentic individual is neither an end nor a begin-
ning but a link between ages, both memory and expectation.
Every moment is a new beginning within a continuum of
history. It is fallacious to segregate a moment and not to sense
its involvement in both past and future. Humbly the past de-
fers to the future, but it refuses to be discarded. Only he who
is an heir is qualified to be a pioneer.
Self-abandonment, permissiveness, reduces existence to a
process in which the power to create events is arrested. The
wisdom of the individual is not sufficient for the apprecia-
tion of the ability to say no to oneself. If one fails to accept

99
the teaching of a tradition, one learns from cardinal experi-
ences, from drastic failures or sudden outbursts of awareness,
that self-denials are as important as self-satisfactions.
T h e teaching of our society is that more knowledge means
more power, more civilizationmore comfort. W e should
have insisted in the spirit of the prophetic vision that more
knowledge should also mean more reverence, that more civi
lization should also mean less violence.
T h e failure of our culture is in demanding too little of the
individual, in not realizing the correlation of rights and obli-
gations, in not realizing that there are inalienable obligations
as well as inalienable rights. Our civilization offers comfort
in abundance and asks for very little in return. Ours is essen-
tially a Yes education; there is little training in the art of say-
ing no to oneself.
The most important ritual object is the altar, but the altars
are being destroyed.

The precariousness of being human

Being human is a most precarious condition. It is not a sub-
stance but a presence, a whisper calling in the wilderness.
Man is hard of inner hearing, but he has sharp, avid eyes.
T h e power he unlocks surpasses the power that he is, dazzling
him. He has a capacity for extravagance, sumptuousness, pre-
sumption. His power is explosive. Human being is boundless,
but being human is respect for bounds. The human situation
may be characterized as a polarity of human being and being
human.
Being human is an imposition of human being on human
nature. It requires resistance to temptation, strength in facing
frustration, refusal to submit to immediate satisfactions. It can

ioo
be discarded with ease and justify a confession: I am inhu-
man and everything human is alien to me.
There is a drive within us to resist the claim upon our con-
science to cultivate existence in conformity with demands.
The sense of indebtedness is first blunted and then swept
away by pride and the love of property and power. All hu
man and national relationships become reduced to one form
only: some dominate, while others are dominated.
Man can be stiff-necked, callous, cruel, refusing to open
himself, to hear, to see, to receive. Even the divine image can
become converted into a satanic image.
Notwithstanding the inner tension between the claim to
be human and the craving to be animal, the alternative is
hardly realistic. Mankind has reached a point of no return to
animality. Man turned beast becomes his opposite, a species
sui generis. The opposite of the human is not the animal but
the demonic.
Creation has not eliminated absurdity and nothingness.
Darkness may be encountered everywhere, and the abyss of
absurdity is always only one step away from us. There is
always more than one path to go, and we are forced to be
freewe are free against our willand have the audacity to
choose, rarely knowing how or why. Our failures glare like
flashlights all the way, and what is right lies underground. W e
are in the minority in the total realm of being, and, with a
genius for adjustment, we frequently seek to join the multi-
tude. W e are in the minority within our own nature, and in
the agony and battle of passions we often choose to envy the
beast. W e behave as if the animal kingdom were our lost para-
dise, to which we are trying to return for moments of delight,
believing that it is the animal State in which happiness con-

IOI
sists. W e ha ve an endless craving to be like the beast, a nos-
talgic admiration for the animal within us. According to a con-
temporary scientist: Mans greatest tragedy occurred when
he ceased to walk on all fours and cut himself off from the
animal world by assuming an erect position. If man had con-
tinued to walk horizontally, and rabbits had learned to walk
vertically, many of the worlds ills would not exist.
Man is continuous both with the rest of organic nature and
with the infinite outpouring of the spirit of God. A minority
in the realm of being, he stands somewhere between God and
the beasts. Unable to live alone, he must commune with either
of the two.
Both Adam and the beasts were blessed by the Lord, but
man was also charged with conquering the earth and domi-
nating the beast. Man is always faced with the choice of listen-
ing either to God or to the snake. It is always easier to envy
the beast, to worship a totem and be dominated by it, than to
hearken to the Voice.
Our existence seesaws between animality and divinity, be
tween that which is more and that which is less than hu-
manity: below is evanescence, futility, and above is the open
door of the divine exchequer where we lay up the sterling
coin of piety and spirit, the immortal remains of our dying
lives. W e are constantly in the mills of death, but we are also
the contemporaries of God.
Man is a little lower than the Divine (Psalm 8:5) and a
little higher than the beasts. Like a pendulum he swings to
and fro under the combined action of gravity and momen-
tum, of the gravitation of selfishness and the momentum of
the divine, of a vision beheld by God in the darkness of flesh
and blood. W e fail to understand the meaning of our exis-

10 2
tence when we disregard our commitments to that vision. Yet
only cyes vigilant and fortified against the glaring and super
ficial can still perceive Gods vision in the souls horror-
stricken night of human folly, falsehood, hatred, and malice.
Because of his immense power, man is potentially the most
wicked of beings. He often has a passion for cruel deeds that
only fear of God can soothe, suffocating flushes of envy that
only holiness can ventilate.
If man is not more than human, then he is less than hu
man. Man is but a short, criticai stage between the animal
and the spiritual. His state is one of constant wavering, of
soaring or descending. Undeviating humanity is nonexistent.
The emancipated man is yet to emerge.
Man is more than what he is to himself. In his reason he
may be limited, in his will he may be wicked, yet he stands
in a relation to God which he may betray but not sever and
which constitutes the essential meaning of his life. He is the
knot in which heaven and earth are interlaced.*
Mans being a problem to himself is an expression of his
being-challenged. T h e only exit from his plight is in realiz-
ing that his plight is a task rather than misery for miserys
sake. W e are both challenged and invitec to answer what we
face.

Being-challcnged-in-the-world
An isolated self, consciousness in general, human nature
in the sense of self-sufficient, spontaneous behavior, uninflu-
enced by intellectual and social factors, is an abstraction.
The pathology of the self will not be understood unless the
power that evokes being human, the ultimate evocation of
* Sce A. J. Heschel, Man Is N ot Alone, pp. 2iof.

103
the self, is properly understood. Boredom, for example, is a
sickness of the self-consciousness, the result of ones inability
to sense that vital evocation. Despair is due not to failures but
to the inability to hear deeply and personally the challenge
that confronts us.
How shall we account for this evocation in the heart of hu-
man being? Whence this concern for direction that tran-
scends sheer being ? It is, it seems, due to the fact that man
in his very existence involves a commitment of which he is
not conscious. This commitment is lodged neither in his mem-
ory nor in his subconscious, and yet it is operative and mys-
teriously present within existence.
T o be sure, man has the power to suppress the challenge by
stressing one drive above all others. This procedure often jus-
tified and hailed by an ideology amounts to the idolization
of a particular drive. Yet, like all idolatry it is eventually
abandoned. History is a vast panorama of idols worshiped and
idols smashed.
The crisis of man is due to his failure to accept that chal
lenge or, even when accepting it, to acknowledge it as the
overriding problem of his total existence.
The world is a problem as well as a task. W e find meaning
by discovering that the problem is the task, in cultivating the
art of sensing our part in the task, in the discovery that the
world is a problem as well as an expectation.
Meaning insinuates itself into our existence. W e cannot
grab or conquer it, we can only be involved in it.
Human living is not simply being here and now, being
around, a matter of fact; it is being in a dilemma, being cross-
examined, called upon to answer. Man is not left alone.
Unlike the being of all other beings, man knows himself as

10 4
being exposed, challenged, judged, encountered. T o be human
is to be a problem. Is the wondering, wrestling, searching, and
quandary a self-inflicted disease ? Eliminate the challenge, the
wrestling, and man will be deprived of his humanity. Being
challenged is not man-made, an attitude, an awareness; it is
an essential mode of his being.
The challenge comes upon me. The question is forced upon
me. I seem unable to transcend my existence. Yet it is the
question that transcends me, that upsets me. Whence does it
come ? Is it the structure of being human that has a built-in
tendency to upset itself, to question itself ?
T o regard the awareness of being challenged as a myth is
itself a myth. The human mind is capable of creating myths.
But is the mind itself a myth ?
Human living is being-challenged-in-the-world, not simply
being-in-the-world. The world forces itself upon me, and
there is no escape from it. Man is continuously exposed to it,
challenged by it, to sense or to comprehend it. He cannot
evade the world. It is as if the world were involved in man,
had a stake in man.
The first thought a child becomes aware of is his being
called, his being asked to respond or to act in a certain way.
It is in acts of responding to demands made upon him that
the child begins to find himself as part of both society and
nature. W ithout the awareness of a task to be done, of a task
waiting for him, man regards himself as an outcast. T h e con-
tent of the task we must acquire, the search for a task is given
with consciousness.
The self is inescapably beset by the questions: W hat shall I
do with my existence, with my being here and now ? W hat
does it mean to be alive ? W hat does being alive imply for my

105
will and intelligence ? Its most characteristic condition is dis-
content with sheer being, generated by a challenge which is
not to be derived from being around, being-here-too; it
questions and transcends human being. Just as consciousness
always posits an idea, as Brentano and Husserl have shown,
self-consciousness posits a challenge. Consciousness of the self
comes about in being challenged, in being called upon, in the
choice between refusal and response.

Requiredness
Human living as being-challenged-in-thc-world can be un-
derstood only in terms of requiredness, demand, and expec-
tation, Significant living is an attempt to adjust to what is
expected and required of a human being.
The sense of requiredness is as cssential to being human as
his capacity for reasoning. It is an error to equate the two as
it is a distortion to derive the sense of requiredness from the
capacity for reasoning.
The sense of requiredness is not an afterthought; it is given
with being human; not added to it but rooted in it.
W hat is involved in authentic living is not only an intui-
tion of meaning but a sensitivity to demand, not a purpose
but an expectation. Sensitivity to demands is as inherent in
being human as physiological functions are in human being.
A person is he of whom demands can be made, who has the
capacity to respond to what is required, not only to satisfy his
needs and desires. Only a human being is said to be respon-
sible. Responsibility is not something man imputes to him-
self; he is a self by virtue of his capacity for responsibility, and
he would cease to be a self if he were to be deprived of re
sponsibility.

10 6
 T h e qualities that constitute personhood, such as love, the
passion for meaning, the capacity to praise, etc., can hardly be
regarded as demands of reason, though reason must ofer di-
rection as to what is worthy of being loved or praised. Their
justification is in their being required for being human.
Here is a basic difference between the Greek and the bibli-
cal conception of man. T o the Greek mind, man is above all
a rational being; rationality makes him compatible with the
cosmos. T o the biblical mind, man is above all a commanded
being, a being of whom demands may be made. The central
problem is not: W hat is being? but rather: W hat is required
of me ?
Greek philosophy began in a world without a supreme, liv
ing, one God. It could not accept the gods or the example of
their conduct. Plato had to break with the gods and to ask:
W hat is the good ? And the problem of values was born. And
it was the idea of values that took the place of God. Plato lets
Scrates ask: W hat is good? Yet Moses question was: W hat
does God require of thee ?

Indebtedness
The most significant intellectual act is to decide what the
most fundamental question is to live by.
Ontology inquires: W hat is being? Epistemology inquires:
W hat is thinking? The heart of man inquries: W hat is ex-
pected of me? Or in the language of the Bible: W hat is re
quired of me ?
The source of insight is an awareness of being called upon
to answer. Over and above personal problems, there is an ob-
jective challenge to overcome inequity, injustice, helplessness,
suffering, carelessness, oppression. Over and above the din of

107
desires there is a calling, a demanding, a waiting, an expecta-
tion. There is a question that follows me wherever I turn.
W hat is expected of me ? W hat is demanded of me ?
W hat we encounter is not only flowers and stars, mountains
and walls. Over and above all things is a sublime expectation,
a waiting for. W ith every child born a new expectation enters
the world.
This is the most important experience in the life of every
human being: something is asked of me. Every human being
has had a moment in which he sensed a mysterious waiting
for him. Meaning is found in responding to the demand,
meaning is found in sensing the demand.
Indebtedness is given with our being human because our
being is not simply being, our being is being created. Being
created means, as said above, that the ought precedes the
is. The world is such that in its face one senses owingness
rather than ownership. The world is such that in sensing its
presence one must be responsive as well as responsible.
Indebtedness is given with our very being. It is not derived
from conceptions; it li ves in us as an awareness before it is
conceptualized or clarified in content. It means having a task,
being called. It experiences living as receiving, not only as
taking. Its content is gratitude for a gift received. It is more
than a biological give-and-take relationship.
Indebtedness is the pathos of being human, self-awareness
of the self as committed; it is given with the awareness of
existence. Man cannot think of himself as human without be
ing conscious of his indebtedness. Thus it is not a mere feel-
ing, but rather a constitutive feature of being human. T o erad-
icate it would be to destroy what is human in man.
The sense of indebtedness, although present in the con-

108
sciousness of all men, is translated in a variety of ways: duty,
obligation, allegiance, conscience, sacrifice. Yet the content
and direction of these terms are subject to interpretation.
There is no authenticity to human existence without a sense
of indebtedness, without an awareness of a point where man
must transcend the self, his interests, his needs, without the
realization that existence involves both utilization and cele-
bration, satisfaction and exaltation.
Knowing is not due to coming upon something, naming
and explaining it. Knowing is due to something forcing itself
upon us.
Thought is a response to being rather than an invention.
The world does not lie prostrate, waiting to be given order
and coherence by the generosity of the human mind. Things
are evocative. W hen conceits are silent and all words stand
still, the world speaks. W e must burn the clichs to clear the
air for hearing. Conceptual clichs are counterfeit; precon-
ceived notions are misfits. Knowledge involves love, care for
the things we seek to know, longing, being-drawn-to, being
overwhelmed.

The experience of being ashcd

But to whom does man in his priceless and unbridled free-
dom owe anything? W here does the asking come from ? T o
whom is he accountable?
Religion has been defined as a feeling of absolute depen-
dence. W e come closer to an understanding of religion by
defining one of its roots as a sense of personal indebtedness.
God is not only a power we depend on, H e is a God who
demands. Religion begins with the certainty that something
is asked of us, that there are ends which are in need of us.

109
Unlike all other values, moral and religious ends evoke in us
a sense of obligation. Thus religious living consists in serving
ends that are in need of us. Man is a divine need, God is in
need of man. Religion is not a feeling for the mystery of liv
ing, or a sense of awe, wonder, or fear, which is the root of
religion; but rather the question what to do with the feeling
for the mystery of living, what to do with awe, wonder, or
fear. Thinking about God begins when we do not know any
more how to wonder, how to fear, how to be in awe. For
wonder is not a State of aesthetic enjoyment. Endless wonder
is endless tension, a situation in which we are shocked at the
inadequacy of our awe, at the weakness of our shock, as well
as the State of being asked the ultimate question.
T h e soul is endowed with a sense of indebtedness, and won
der, awe, and fear unlock that sense of indebtedness. Wonder
is the State of our being asked.
In spite of our pride, in spite of our acquisitiveness, we are
driven by an awareness that something is asked of us; that
we are asked to wonder, to revere, to think, and to live in a
way compatible with the grandeur and mystery of living.
W hat gives birth to religion is not intellectual curiosity but
the fact and experience of our being asked.
All that is left to us is a choiceto answer or to refuse to
answer. Yet the more deeply we listen, the more we become
stripped of the arrogance and callousness which alone would
enable us to refuse. W e carry a load of marvel, wishing to
exchange it for the simplicity of knowing what to live for, a
load which we can never lay down or continue to carry not
knowing where.
If awe is rare, if wonder is dead, and the sense of mystery
defunct, then the problem of what to do with awe, wonder,

ixo
and mystery does not exist, and one does not sense being
asked. The awareness of being asked is easily repressed, for
it is an echo of the intimation that is small and still. It will
not, however, remain forever subdued. The day comes when
the still small intimation becomes like the wind and storm,
fulfilling His word (Psalm 148:8).
Indeed, the dead emptiness in the heart is unbearable to the
living man. W e cannot survive unless we know what is asked
of us.

7 am commandedtherefore I am
No one will question the reality and authenticity of the be
ing of a stone. Yet how does man recognize and establish the
reality of being human ? Is not being human an arbitrary im-
position ? I never question my animality. But is humanity in-
trinsic to my being ? Is not the very concept of humanity an
illusion, a conceit, or an epiphenomenon ? De omnibus dubi-
tandum. O f one thing, however, I am sure. There is a chal-
lenge that I can never evade, in moments of failure as in
moments of achievement. Man is inescapably, essentially chal-
lenged on all leveis of his existence. It is in his being chal-
lenged that he discovers himself as a human being. Do I exist
as a human being? My answer is: 7 am commanded there-
fore I am. There is a built-in sense of indebtedness in the con-
sciousness of man, an awareness of owing gratitude, of being
called upon at certain moments to reciprocate, to answer, to
live in a way which is compatible with the grandeur and mys
tery of living.
The ultimate validity of being human depends upon pro-
phetic moments. If care, reciprocity, and the quest of man are
self-induced or mere functions of the social organism, then

in
being human must be regarded as an experimentthat failed.
T h e reality of being human depends upon mans sense of in-
debtedness being a response to transcendent requiredness.
W ithout such awareness man is spiritually inane, neither
Creative nor responsible. Man is a commanded being, coming
into meaning in sensing the demand.
Failure to understand what is demanded of us is the source
of anxiety. The acceptance of our existential debt is the pre-
requisite of sanity.
The world was not made by man. The earth is the Lords,
not a derelict. W hat we own, we owe. How shall I ever re-
pay to the Lord all his bounties to m e! (Psalm 116:12).

Embarrassment
Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, let not the
mighty man glory in his m ight; but let him who glories glory
in this: that he has a sense of ultimate embarrassment . How
embarrassing for man to be the greatest mirade on earth and
not to understand i t ! How embarrassing for man to live in the
shadow of greatness and to ignore it, to be a contemporary of
God and not to sense it. Religion depends upon what man
does with his ultimate embarrassment. It is the awareness that
the world is too great for him, the awareness of the grandeur
and mystery of being, the awareness of being present at the
unfolding of an inconceivable eternal saga.
Embarrassment is the awareness of an incongruity of char-
acter and challenge, of perceptivity and reality, of knowledge
and understanding, of mystery and comprehension. Experi-
encing the evanescence of time, one realizes the absurdity of
m ans sense of sovereignty. In the face of the immense misery
o f the human species, one realizes the insufficiency of all hu-

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man effort to relieve it. In the face of ones inner anguish, one
realizes the fallacy of absolute expediency.
Embarrassment is a response to the discovery that in living
we either replenish or frustrate a wondrous expectation. It in
volves an awareness of the grandeur of existence that may be
wasted, of a waiting ignored, of unique moments missed. It
is a protection against the outburst of the inner evils, against
arrogance, hybris, self-deification. The end of embarrassment
would be the end of humanity.
There is hardly a person who does not submit his soul to
the beauty parlor, who does not employ the make-up of vanity
in order to belie his embarrassment. It is only before God that
we all stand naked.
Great is the challenge we face at every moment, sublime the
occasion, every occasion. Here we are, contemporaries of God,
some of His power at our disposal.
The honest man is humbled by the awareness that his high-
est qualities are but semiprecious; all ground for firmness is
mud. Except for his will to cling to life, what is his abiding
concern ?
Embarrassment not only precedes religious commitment;
it is the touchstone of religious existence. How embarrassing
for man to have been created in the likeness of God and to be
unable to recognize him! In the words of Job:
Lo, He passes by me and I see Him not;
He moves on, but I do not perceive Him.
Job 9:11
T h e sense of embarrassment may be contrasted with the
self-assurance of a nonreligious type: I do not need a God
to tell me how to live. I am a good person without going to
the synagogue or church. A religious man could never say:
I am a good person. Far from being satisfied with his con-
duct, he prays three times daily: Forgive us, our Father, for
we have sinned.
I am afraid of people who are never embarrassed at their
own pettiness, prejudices, envy, and conceit, never embar
rassed at the profanation of life. A world full of grandeur has
been converted into a carnival. There are slums, disease, and
starvation all over the world, and we are building more lux-
urious hotels in Las Vegas. Social dynamics is no substitute
for moral responsibility.
I shudder at the thought of a society ruled by people who
are absolutely certain of their wisdom, by people to whom
everything in the world is crystal-clear, whose minds know
no mystery, no uncertainty.
W hat the world needs is a sense of embarrassment. Modem
man has the power and the wealth to overcome poverty and
disease, but he has no wisdom to overcome suspicion. W e are
guilty of misunderstanding the meaning of existence; we are
guilty of distorting our goals and misrepresenting our souls.
W e are better than our assertions, more intricate, more pro-
found than our theories maintain. Our thinking is behind the
times.
W hat is the truth of being human ? The lack of pretension,
the acknowledgment of opaqueness, shortsightedness, inade-
quacy. But truth also demands rising, striving, for the goal is
both within and beyond us. The truth of being human is
grtitude; its secret is appreciation.

Celebration
The power of being human is easily dissolved in the process
of excessive trivialization. Banality and triteness, the by-prod-
ucts of repetitiveness, continue to strangle or corrode the sense
of significant being. Submerged in everydayness, man begins
to treat all hours alike. The days are drab, the nights revolt
in the helplessness of despair. All moments are stillborn, all
hours seem stale. There is neither wonder nor praise. W hat is
left is disenchantment, the disintegration of being human.

How should one prevent the liquidation of ones power to

experience everydayness as events ? How should one ease the
pressures of diluting human being to just being-around ?
Events and the sense of surprise are not only inherent in the
quintessence of reality and authentic consciousness, they are
the points from which misunderstandings of human existence
proceed. The question is not where is the event and what is
the surprise, but how to see through the sham of routine, how
to refute the falsehood of familiarity. Boredom is a spiritual
disease, infectious and deadening, but curable.
The self is always in danger of being submerged in ano-
nymity, of becoming a thing. T o celebrate is to contemplate
the singularity of the moment and to enhance the singularity
of the self. W hat was shall not be again.
The biblical words about the genesis of heaven and earth
are not words of information but words of appreciation. The
story of creation is not a description of how the world came
into being but a song about the glory of the worlds having
come into being. And God saw that it was good (Genesis
1 :2 5 ). This is the challenge: to reconcile Gods view with our
experience.
W e, however, live on borrowed notions, rely on past per-
ceptions, thrive on inertia, delight in relaxation. Insight is a
strain, we shun it frequently or even permanently. T h e de-
mand, as understood in biblical religion, is to be alert and
open to what is happening. W hat is, happcns, comes about.
Every moment is a new arrival, a new bestowal. How to wel-
come the moment? How to respond to the marvel?
T h e cardinal sin is in our failure not to sense the grandeur
of the moment, the marvel and mystery of being, the possi-
bility of quiet exaltation.
The secret of spiritual living is the power to praise. Praise
is the harvest of love. Praise precedes faith. First we sing, then
we believe. T h e fundamental issue is not faith but sensitivity
and praise, being ready for faith.
T o be overtaken with awe of God is not to entertain a feel-
ing but to share in a spirit that permeates all being. They all
thank, they all praise, they all say: There is no one like God.
As an act of personal recognition our praise would be fatuous;
it is meaningful only as an act of joining in the endless song.
W e praise with the pebbles on the road which are like petri-
fied amazement, with all the flowers and trees which look as
if hypnotized in silent devotion.

T o be human involves the ability to appreciate as well as

the ability to give expression to appreciation. For thousands
of years authentic existence included both manipulation and
appreciation, utilization and celebration, both work and wor-
ship. In primitive society they were interdependent; in bibli
cal religion they were interrelated. Today we face a different
situation.
Man may forfeit his sense of the ineffable. T o be alive is a
commonplace; the sense of radical amazement is gone; the
world is familiar, and familiarity does not breed exaltation or
even appreciation. DepriVed of the ability to praise, modem

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man is forced to look for entertainment; entertainment is be-
coming compulsory.
The man of our time is losing the power of celebration.
Instead of celebrating, he seeks to be amused or entertained.
Celebration is an active State, an act of expressing reverence
or appreciation. T o be entertained is a passive Stateit is to re-
ceive pleasure afforded by an amusing act or a spectacle. En
tertainment is a diversion, a distraction of the attention of the
mind from the preoccupations of daily living. Celebration is
a confrontation, giving attention to the transcendent meaning
of ones actions.
Celebration is an act of expressing respect or reverence for
that which one needs or honors. In modern usage, the term
suggests demonstrations, often public demonstrations, of joy
and festivity, such as singing, shouting, speechmaking, feast-
ing, and the like. Yet what I mean is not outward ceremony
and public demonstration, but rather inward appreciation,
lending spiritual form to everyday acts. Its essence is to call
attention to the sublime or solemn aspects of living, to rise
above the confines of consumption.
T o celebrate is to share in a greater joy, to participate in an
eternal drama. In acts of consumption the intention is to
please our own seives; in acts of celebration the intention is
to extol God, the spirit, the source of blessing.
W hat is the purpose of knowledge ? W e are conditioned to
believe that the purpose of knowledge is to utilize the world.
W e forget that the purpose of knowledge is also to celebrate
God. God is both present and absent. T o celebrate is to invoke
His presence concealed in His absence.
T h e mind is in search of rational coherence, the soul in
quest of celebration. Knowledge is celebration. Truth is more
than equation o f thing and thought. Truth transcends and
unites both thing and thought. Truth is transcendence, its
comprehension is loyalty.
T o the sense of indebtedness, the meaning of existence lies
in reciprocity. In receiving a pleasure, we must return a
prayer; in attaining a success, we radiate compassion. The
world is not mere material for exploitation. W e have the right
to consume because we have the power to celebrate.
Since indebtedness is an essential ingredient of existence,
the inability to celebrate is a sign of insolvency, of an inability
to pay the existential debt.
There is no celebration without earnestness, without solem-
nity and reverence.
W e are losing the power of appreciation; we are losing the
ability to sing. Celebration without appreciation is an artifi
cial, impersonal ceremony. A renewal of our strength will de-
pend on our ability to reopen forgotten resources.
The meaning of existence is experienced in moments of
exaltation. Man must strive for the summit in order to sur-
vive on the ground. His norms must be higher than his be-
havior, his ends must surpass his needs. The security of ex
istence lies in the exaltation of existence.
This is one of the rewards of being human: quiet exalta
tion, capability for celebration. It is expressed in a phrase
which Rabbi Akiba offered to his disciples:
Asongevery day,
A song every day.

Man in quest for an anchor in ultimate meaning is far from

being a person shipwrecked who dreams of a palace while
napping on the edge of an abyss. He is a person in full mas-

118
tery of his ship who has lost his direction because he failed
to remember his destination. Man in his anxiety is a messen-
ger who forgot the message.
It is an accepted fact that the Bible has given the world a
new concept of God. W hat is not realized is the fact that the
Bible has given the world a new vision of man. The Bible is
not a book about G od; it is a book about man.
From the perspective of the Bible:
W ho is man ? A being in travail with Gods dreams and de-
signs, with Gods dream of a world redeemed, of reconcilia-
tion of heaven and earth, of a mankind which is truly His
image, reflecting His wisdom, justice, and compassion. Gods
dream is not to be alone, to have mankind as a partner in
the drama of continuous creation. By whatever we do, by
every act we carry out, we either advance or obstruct the
drama of redemption; we either reduce or enhance the power
of evil.